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Book 



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Copyright N ^ 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE SOCIAL BETTERMENT SERIES 

EDITED BY 

SHAILER MATHEWS, D.D. 



THE COMING 
GEN ER ATI O N 



THE COMING 
GENERATION 



BY 



WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, Ph.D., Litt.D. 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK AND LONDON: 1912 



.Ft 



Copyright, 1912, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published February, 1912 



Printed in the United States of America 



State 



©CI. A 300 2 95 

no. » 



\3 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION 



THE feeling of social responsibility which charac- 
terizes our day has led to severe criticism of 
various phases of our modern world, and to 
innumerable plans for social reconstruction. In conse- 
quence, the actual achievements of social betterment 
have been frequently overlooked in our sense of impera- 
tive tasks and our distrust of Utopias. Nevertheless, 
steady advance has been made in correcting evils and in 
establishing laws, institutions, and precedents looking 
toward the genuine improvement of social conditions. 
The present series of volumes undertakes to describe ac- 
curately this advance for the general reader. Although 
written by specialists in their particular fields, the plan 
and method of each volume are not technical. The 
great reading public has been pretty thoroughly in- 
formed as to our social liabilities; the present series 
will list our social assets. Such a presentation it is 
believed will not lead to a complacent optimism, but 
will serve to reassure the rapidly growing class of those 
who are ready and even eager to join in all practicable 
efforts to right evils but who, at the same time, wish to 
maintain the continuity of social evolution. 

Shailer Mathews. 



PREFACE 



HERE is the first endeavor to furnish in a single 
volume a short, readable account of all the 
forces that are working for the betterment of 
American young people. 

If we are to know anything about betterment we 
must know something about the childhood which it is 
proposed to better. Instead of giving what might be 
a rather arid resume of child study, however, the 
author has in the first part of the book, which deals 
with the betterment of boys and girls in their homes, 
introduced such discoveries about children as their 
parents and friends are likely to make. The second 
part is devoted to the means of giving children a fair 
start. The third part deals with betterment through 
education. In the fourth part the work of prevention, 
with delinquent and neglected children, is described. 
Book V is devoted to the matter of the religious and 
social nurture of the young. Finally, there is a 
summary, in which a program for united and general 
effort with and for boys and girls is briefly outlined. 

There are references for further reading and a list 
of fuller bibliographies is given at the close. 

William Byron Forbush 
Detroit, Michigan 

vii 



CONTENTS 



BOOK I 

BETTERMENT THROUGH THE HOME 

HAPTER PAGE 

I. The General Confession 1 

The absence of training for parenthood — 
The method of parenthood is Incarnation — 
Essentials are health and humor — The goal 
is reality. 

II. Some Adventures Among Savages ... 6 

The savage instincts of childhood — Illustra- 
tions from the fighting instinct — The place 
of the instincts — The years of physical revo- 
lution. 

III. The Young Pretender ...... 16 

The avidness of young children — Imagina- 
tiveness — The play instinct. 

IV. How a Child Does His Thinking 24 

The limitations of pre-adolescence — The 
memory and habit years — The limitlessness of 
adolescence — The years of new birth. 

V. Books and Firelight and Children's Faces. 29 

The place of stories in a child's life — Stories 
as a gate to expression — Stories as an intro- 
duction to books. 

VI. The Gang . . . . . . \ .39 

What the gang spirit means — How to use it. 
ix 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VII. The Religious Life of a Child . . . . 44 

The religion of instinct — The religion of 
habit — The religion of sentiment — The re- 
ligion of will — The religion of thought — Re- 
ligious nurture. 

VIII. The Wander Years 53 

The prodigal spirit, its causes and treat- 
ment — The development of responsibility. 

IX. The Modern Home . • 60 

Losses and gains — Possible readjustments — 
Co-ordination with helpful forces — Punish- 
ments — Essentials. 

X. The Art of Being a Godparent ... 73 

The social and personal worker with the 
young — The importance and opportunity of 
such work — The moral influence of such work 
— The worker's foes — Reality the keynote of 
social and personal work — The methods of 
social work: clubs, mutuality, camps — 
Methods of personal service. 



BOOK II 

A BETTER START 

XI. Eugenics 85 

The importance of better births — The 
training of future mothers and fathers — The 
protection of girls — The abolition of prosti- 
tution — The asexualizing of the unfit — The 
encouragement of better heritages. 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XII. Health . . . 98 

The relation of Eugenics to health — Hy- 
giene as a school study and habit — The scien- 
tific examination of children — What to do 
after defects are discovered — The inspection 
of the food and drink supply — The education 
of the home in health. 



BOOK III 

BETTERMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 

XIII. The New Education 112 

Definitions of education discussed — The 
causes of the break-down of the old education 
— The transfers of emphasis to-day — What 
we have been learning: from child study, 
about interest, about play, about the will — 
Why children leave school — The changes 
that are coming in our schools: in the course 
of study, in the approach, in the recitation, 
as to home study, as to the schoolhouse — Two 
critical periods requiring attention — The 
social emphasis. 

XIV. Vocational Training and Guidance . . 136 

Why a present necessity — The German 
method of vocational trainings— Steps of prog- 
ress in this country in vocational training — 
What is being done in vocational guidance. 

XV. Some High-School Problems . . . .151 

The problems of school organization and 
fraternities — The problem of prematurity — 
The moral problem of the high school. 

xi 



Contents 



XVI. Moral Training in Schools . . . 162 

Its advisability and necessity — The Ger- 
man method — The French method — The 
moral needs of childhood and ways to supply 
them — Informal methods of training — For- 
mal training — Difficulties. 

XVII. The Social School 175 

Evening schools — Vacation schools — 
School playgrounds — Public lectures and en- 
tertainments — Recreation centers — Social 
centers — Organized athletics, games and 
folk dancing. 

XVIII. Defective Children 189 

The need of classification and care — The 
low-grade idiot — The moral imbecile — The 
congenital imbecile — The feeble-minded — 
Atypical children — The training of teachers 
for defectives — Influence upon general edu- 
cation—Other defectives. 



XIX. Play and Playgrounds 



. 203 



The meaning of play — The dangers of un- 
supervised play — The purposes of the play- 
ground movement — American playgrounds: 
vacant lots and streets, slum playgrounds, 
parks, schoolgrounds, recreation piers, civic 
centers, baths — What a playground ought to 
contain — The supervision — The trend of 
the movement. 

XX. Clubs for Street Boys .... 



212 



Their origin and heed — A club described 
— The superintendent — The club and the 
family — The future of such clubs. 



xn 



Contents 



CHAPTER 

XXI. Camps and Outings 



PAGE 

223 



The growth of the vacation habit — The 
family camp — The church camp — The mu- 
nicipal camp — The Association camp — The 
school camp — The essentials of a camp — 
The program of a camp— feXhe educational 
values)— The need of work camps — School 
gardening — The play school — Fresh air 
funds. 



XXII. College and the Child 236 

Bringing children to college — Bringing 
the college to children — Relating the col- 
lege to the social life of the people. 



XXIII. The Beautiful Ordering of Life . . . 241 

The slow development of a beautiful com- 
munity life in America — A typical county 
seat described — Resources of a small city: 
the community center, the drama and music, 
books and libraries, Chautauquas and the 
lyceum, fairs and pageants, teachers' insti- 
tutes, the newspaper, church architecture, 
services and social life, lodges and women's 
clubs, personal forces — Resources of large 
cities: the playhouse and the motion picture 
show, public music, city fetes, museums and 
libraries, free-lecture systems, city planning 
— The special problem of recreation in a 
city — Resources of the country: the country 
church and minister, the grange, the school. 

xiii 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIV. A Child Educating Himself . . . .271 

Through asking questions — In solitude — 
In his room — Through collections — By 
financial transactions — By mistakes — 
Through social organization and activities. 



BOOK IV 

BETTERMENT THROUGH PREVENTION 

XXV. The Regulation of Child Labor . . 275 

The evils of child labor — Methods of reg- 
ulation: the minimum wage, compulsory 
insurance, school feeding, readjustment of 
the schools, prohibitory laws, laws requir- 
ing school attendance — The abuse of lei- 
sure. 



XXVI. The Juvenile Court 



286 



Why and how it came into being — What 
children come before the court — The classi- 
fication of delinquents — The essentials of 
a good court: a good law, the judge, the 
court procedure, the physical examination,- 
the probation officer, the parole officer, the 
truant officer, the detention home — Juvenile 
protective leagues — The "Big Brother' ' 
movement — Ways of anticipating delin- 
quency. 

xiv 



Contents 



XXVII. Reformatory Methods 306 

The old and the new penology — The 
steps of reform in treatment: the classifica- 
tion era, the reformatory era, the placing- 
out era — How the court turns the delin- 
quent over to reformatory agencies — The 
place for institutions — Special reformatory 
methods: a junior republic and a farm 
school — Boys and girls over sixteen. 

XXVIII. Dependent and Neglected Children . 319 

How such children are committed — The 
care of dependent infants — The cases of 
unmarried parents — The relations of child- 
helping work — The place of institutions. 



BOOK V 

betterment through religious and social nurture 
and service 



XXIX. The Sunday School 326 

What the Sunday school is for — The mod- 
ern Sunday-school teacher— Teacher train- 
ing — The course of study— Materials of 
instruction — Methods of teaching — Train- 
ing in service — Two critical periods. 

XXX. The Church Living with Its Children . 341 

Church festivals — The story hour — The 
junior society — Girls' organizations — Boys' 
organizations — The church gymnasium — 
Evening classes — Church dormitories — 
Opportunities for service. 

xv 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXXI. The Christian Associations . . .358 

The Y. M. C. A.— Its evolution— Its 
work: for rural boys, for street boys, for 
foreign and colored boys, for employed boys, 
through Association schools, for high- 
school boys, for preparatory-school boys — 
Opportunities for social service — The Y. 
W. C. A. — Its work: for employed girls. 

XXXII. The Larger Nurture 376 

Education of the young for social service: 
through modern literature, by socialism, in 
the universities, in the schools, through 
civic movements, through reform and social 
organizations, in the home, in the church. 

A Program for the Betterment of Boys and Girls. 382 

Bibliographies . . . 386 

Index . 391 



xvi 



INTRODUCTION 



THIS book has grown out of the experiences of 
one who has been a parent of and a social worker 
with boys for twenty years. These intensive 
pieces of work have naturally led him on to think 
about the larger problem. What does child study tell 
us about our own children and those of other people? 
How shall all children get a good start? How shall 
we keep them in health? What is education for, and 
what is the "New Education" doing, and what means 
of education are there beyond the school? Then what 
about the dependent, the defective and the delinquent 
children? And finally, what of the larger religious and 
social nurture of children, and how shall they be 
trained to become in turn the wise parents of another 
generation? So the book grew to be a short account of 
all the forces that are working for the betterment of 
American boys and girls. The account is necessarily 
elementary, but it is supplemented by references which 
open up the larger field of research to those who wish 
to go more deeply into any of these matters. 

Behind all the forces for betterment there stand cer- 
tain national problems which affect and are affected by 
all efforts to do good to children. Some of these are 
as follows: 

No nation yet has been able to stand prosperity. 



XVll 



Introduction 



The future of America depends upon the ability of the 
men of to-day to help the men of to-morrow to use 
wisely and with self-control resources, instruments of 
power and means of luxury such as no other people 
has known. 

No people hitherto has solved the problem of 
bringing up children successfully in great cities. We 
who are becoming in our conditions everywhere an 
urban people have that problem upon us. 

No religion or school of morals has so far succeeded 
in adequately educating the youth of its race in morals 
or even in learning how it is to be done. But this is a 
thing that must be accomplished. 

No social or moral progress can be made without 
preserving the home in integrity, sanctity and power. 
Never was the human home in greater danger. 

No civilization has yet understood how to bring to 
the surface its submerged portion, to bring up to the 
ranks its backward section and to gather up the 
fragments of its human waste. This matter, as it ap- 
plies to adults and children alike, we have set ourselves 
to face. 

In the study of the various and often apparently 
unrelated ways in which men, out of wisdom, prudence 
or love, are trying to help the young the author has 
tried to bear steadily in mind that behind these mere 
agencies which he describes are the universal problems 
that have just been mentioned: the problem of living 
in a rich and luxurious time, the problem of living 
successfully in cities, the problem of moral education, 
and the problem of saving the human home. 

xviii 



Introduction 



It would not be possible for any one person to be 
a specialist in all these fields. The author has worked 
in a few of them, has read considerably and thought 
some, and has been fortunate in the acquaintance of 
many people who have done things. Some of the 
chapters are little more than compilations, others 
contain a good deal of personal experience or thought. 
Some of the activities described are in such a rapid 
state of development that it has seemed better to be 
somewhat vague as to places and figures, utilizing 
specific facts chiefly as illustrations of the permanent 
principles which they embody. Often, though, an 
endeavor has been made to use personal instances, in 
the desire to avoid the abstract. The writer has also 
tried to remember that it is usually better to talk about 
children than about The Child. 



xix 



BOOK ONE 
BETTERMENT THROUGH THE HOME 

I 

THE GENERAL CONFESSION 

WHY is it that, since parenthood is the business 
at which most of us spend three-fourths of our 
time, the State should allow it to be taught 
only to spinster school teachers? This at least explains 
why, when they do marry, they make the best mothers. 
Training tells. 

When that fashionable anomaly of to-day, an only 
child, marries another only child, often their feeling 
toward a baby is chiefly that of fear. They may have 
hardly ever actually seen one before. It seems to be 
something boneless, red in the face and subject to 
whirlwinds of lamentation. They studied about crus- 
taceans in school. Very likely they dissected cats. 
But they know absolutely nothing about a human 
child, the most beautiful, the most appealing thing in 
art or nature. No wonder that there has to be a Na- 
tional League for the Protection of the Family. These 
two, well meaning we trust, about to become authors 
of other lives, complex, helpless, destined to the whole 
reach of a moral experience, why were they robbed of 

1 



Betterment through the Home 

their birthright, an intelligent knowledge and love of 
children? 

Little children play keep house, and mother and 
father dolls, and imitate with sly humor the whims of 
their parents. Later they play that they are heroes 
and adventurers, and later yet that they are rich. But 
why should not the childish dream become real and be 
filled with sanity and wisdom, and the school boy, 
instead of becoming enraptured with the idea of trying 
to be both rich and pious, chiefly resolve, "Some day I 
will be a great father!" Is there anything shocking 
about this? The story of the centuries is really not in 
the biographies of warriors and kings, but in the lives 
of great fathers and mothers. The fine tales of the 
Good Book are chiefly about the ways of parents with 
their children. And no human character can become 
completely mature without some relation to child- 
hood. All may not become parents, but those who do 
not should be prepared to be godparents. 

In the lower animal world the parent is allowed 
to survive only long enough to protect its young 
through its helpless early days. For some reason the 
Creator lets us stay a little longer here, but that does 
not alter the fact that one of the chief reasons for our 
existence is to furnish a worthy line of successors. 
And the only training we get to do this is our own 
self-education. 

A father, for example, rejoices with great joy and 
ignorance when his first man-child is born. But he 
has no idea whatever of what is expected of him. And 
it turns out that it is not what the community expects 

2 



The General Confession 



of a father that is so alarming; it is what his own child 
expects of him that frightens him. When a man hears 
his babe say his prayers to himself, or notes the child's 
implicit confidence that he is quite omnipotent, it 
makes him uneasy. No one ever told him that some 
day he was to become God to another soul. The 
child is teaching him that. Indeed the child is teach- 
ing him everything. The only infallible teacher of 
parents are their own children; and what most of us 
keep busy in doing is trying to prevent them from 
finding it out. 

Every act of the young child is a plea to its parent 
to one end. It makes us say: Why does he do this? 
What is he crying about? What makes him happy? 
It is all one continuous appeal: "Please try to under- 
stand me; please put yourself in my place. " And in 
so far as the instinct of motherhood and the instinct 
of fatherhood answer this cry do parents become 
good and generally wise. What they do, or fumble 
in trying to do, they may after a while realize can be 
expressed only by a very sacred word — Incarnation. 
The secret of a great parenthood is the habit of incar- 
nation. There is practically nothing else that we have 
to do, but this is a thing that may well tax all our 
strength — always to put ourselves into our child. 

An essential requirement for the habit of incarnation 
is health. And by this is meant not merely physical 
strength to bring up children and that athletic ability 
which makes a father so much a hero to his growing 
child and his chums, but also healthy-mindedness. The 
quality is more common among young people, and that 

3 



Betterment through the Home 

is a reason why it is well if parenthood can come early 
in life. Most parents are willing to give everything to 
their children, except the one thing needful, them- 
selves. Some one has said, that it is a great man who 
can put himself in a small place and not feel cramped. 
But the weakness of most parenthood is its externalism. 
» Closely allied with that wholesome willingness to 
share life with a child is another quality, the sense of 
humor. Because parenthood is a sacred profession, we 
do not need to be gloomy about it. We always need 
a gift of prayer, but there come times, trying times, 
when the gift of humor is more immediately useful. 
Did you ever realize that a strained situation always 
has something funny about it? Humor at its highest 
and best is the same as insight. 

Somehow the word that keeps echoing and reecho- 
ing in the experiences of parenthood is Reality, Reality. 
The child is the realest creature alive. How straight 
he sees, how directly he acts, how he always tells the 
truth, unless he is scared into lying! It is a great duty 
of ours to clear ourselves of conventionalism, to forget 
that we are grown up and to hearken patiently until we 
find out what our child means and is trying so patiently 
to say. As the reader peruses the following chapters, 
in which some of the average experiences of a home 
are described, and some of the emerging traits of chil- 
dren are discussed, let him try to imagine himself 
sharing this constant attitude of parenthood, the atti- 
tude of listening. 

We ought to have had more definite information 
about child nature and child nurture before we grew 



The General Confession 



up, but taking such information as we have and can get, 
we parents must constantly listen at the door of child 
life, we must endeavor patiently to interpret what we 
hear, largely through our own memories, and then we 
must share our life with our children. 

This is the author's General Confession, and now 
he will proceed to show more particularly what some 
of those experiences are likely to be, and how they may, 
in the home, be used for the betterment of children. 

REFERENCES 

The number of thoroughly practical books helpful to 
parents in understanding and training their children is lim- 
ited. The author has found the following to be most sen- 
sible: 

44 Your Boy: His Nature and Nurture," by George A. 
Dickinson. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909. 

* ' Mother and Daughter, ' ' by Gabrielle E. Jackson. New 
York: Harper and Bros., 1905. 

"Education and the Larger Life," by C. Hanford Hen- 
derson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1902. 

"The Century of the Child, " by Ellen Key. New York: 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1909. 



II 

SOME ADVENTURES AMONG SAVAGES 

THE boy between six and ten years is a type of 
himself. He is not the "little man" whom his 
father is all the time urging him to be, nor the 
psychological manikin whom Theophilus Innocentius, 
Ph.D., has conjured up on his wondrous charts from 
a questionaire sent out to 14,329 patient school teach- 
ers. The author remembers one of these child-study 
gropers, who hastened over from the University one 
day, when his family was in the midst of moving. He 
seated himself insecurely on a bicycle crate, and with 
near-sighted gaze was jotting down the valuable infor- 
mation that was being handed out during the packing 
of the fruit cans. What he wanted to know was: "Do 
you find that your children have ever expressed a horror 
of big teeth? and if so, is it an atavistic reverberation 
from subconscious race-memory of the contiguity of 
wild animals?" Just then the door opened, and in 
burst three hopefuls, clad in jack-o-lantern heads, and 
overthrew the good Doctor's foundation, both of phil- 
osophical theory and physical stability. 

When the author was a boy, his parents used to 
take him to the fine old town of Woodstock, Vermont, 
for his summer vacations. In the middle of the village 
is a park of elms and maples. Here, at that time, dwelt 

6 



Some Adventures among Savages 

an interesting family of toads. He and his playmates 
used to go into that park and decapitate those toads, 
and divide them up with their little blunt jack-knives, 
and expose them for sale on the white rails of the fence, 
at prices varying from one to ten pins, according to 
the choiceness of the cut. It was not until some by- 
stander hinted strongly that they were not acting as 
Christian children should that they realized that this 
"butcher shop" involved cruelty. Was this "atavistic 
reverberation,' ' or didn't they know any better? The 
author's children never do such things, and would be 
horrified at the suggestion. Is that because they are 
more civilized, or less enterprising, or never had the 
chance? 

Yet there was something in it, after all. 

An instinct that is common to all normal boys is 
the instinct to fight. 

"If any naughty boy tries to make you fight, come 
right home to mamma." 

"If I ever catch you fighting on the street, sir, I'll 
give you another licking as soon as you get home." 

It is the boy who has listened to such feminine and 
masculine admonitions, and then gone forth to his in- 
evitable schoolyard contests, and returned bravely to 
that promised punishment, who has true courage. It 
is that boy, too, who grows up alienated from his 
parents, and they wonder vaguely why boys are so diffi- 
cult to understand. 

Whatever may be the higher ethical plane to which 
adults have climbed, one of the small but choice articles 
of faith of a normal voungster is that it is often both 

7 



Betterment through the Home 

necessary and praiseworthy to fight. He who assails 
that conviction has simply uprooted one of the moral 
foundations of a child's life. 

The psychologist explains the fighting instinct by 
saying that it is one of the savage survivals, a manifes- 
tation of the struggle for life. The struggle for the 
life of others is most noble, but it cannot come until 
the individual's self-life is. secure. The boy will by 
and by rise to a sense of chivalry, struggle for others; 
but first he must win a self-consciousness and self- 
respect of his own, and this he does most directly in 
fighting with his peers. Fighting is not so selfish as 
non-resistance, which protects the person but injures 
the self-respect by flight. 

It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that fight- 
ing among boys does not always nor often mean what 
it does among men. Boy's fighting, like their play, 
usually consists in getting ready. It is simply an acute 
game of " bluff," a test of will-power, of grace to stand 
up to a situation. The loser retires, unharmed, but 
discomfited and discredited. 

Fighting has also a strangely social effect. "Two 
boys can never become chums until they have had a 
fight," is a well-known maxim. The reason girls are 
not such true friends as boys is because they will not 
fight. When boys quarrel they fight, and that is the 
end of it. When girls quarrel they sputter, and that 
is not the end of it. A fight, like an electric storm, 
clears the air. Boys' games have a finer fellowship 
than those of groups of girls, because they keep the 
air clear. 

8 



Some Adventures among Savages 

The boy who is not allowed to fight, or who won't 
fight, does not lack the pugnacious instinct, but ex- 
hibits it in less pleasing ways. He is underhanded, 
wins by fraud or treachery, eggs on others to "lick" 
his enemy, curries favor by bribes, and is rightly an 
object of universal contempt. When he grows up, he 
is timid, weak, solitary, narrow in sympathy. In his 
home he is a tyrant, in politics an "anti," in society a 
bore. It is hard to see how a boy who can't fight can 
acquire a sense of honor. 

In many schools every new boy is put on his mettle, 
and wins his place in the school by such exhibitions of 
his physical prowess. In some communities boys actu- 
ally cannot attend school in bodily safety, until they 
have proved their courage. The sooner they do it, 
the better. After the initiatory engagement they are 
not required to fight again. 

Fighting is often a manifestation of chivalry. 
There is simply no other way to take care of a school 
bully than to down him by force. It is a good thing 
for a family of boys to be told that they are a clan, and 
that they must rescue each other when in distress. 

One day when the author was giving utterance to 
these ideas before a company of school teachers, one of 
them told him the following story: He said that one 
day his oldest son, a rather delicate boy, came home 
from school, bearing the marks of a recent struggle. 
An hour later, a neighbor came over, tremendously 
angry. "Your son has been fighting with mine," he 
said, "and has broken his arm. I want you to thrash 
him within an inch of his life." It was hard to resist 



Betterment through the Home 



this neighborly advice or to withhold that form of cor- 
rection which is the uniquely inconsistent resort of 
many strong-armed fathers in such emergencies. But 
the father schoolmaster was wise. When the facts all 
came into view, it appeared that the injured boy was 
much larger and stronger than his own son, and that he 
was the school bully. Day after day he had annoyed 
his boy, who had borne himself with splendid self- 
restraint. On this day, however, he had called the lad's 
father a vile name. Instantly the loyal boy sprang 
upon the bully like a tiger, and as an incident of the 
fight, the soft bone of the arm was broken. "What 
would I have thought of myself," said the father to me 
with a proud look, "if I had whipped my son for de- 
fending the family honor?" 

In saying this, no claim is made that all fighting 
among boys is proper. A healthy-minded father ought 
to be able to guide his son, so as to know when it is 
time to put up his fists. 

Such fighting, like a well-known soothing syrup, 
hardens the gums, cures nervousness, and prevents 
wakefulness at night. It also strengthens the will, 
gives an appetite for high contests, and leads to self- 
control. But the only good instinct is a controlled in- 
stinct. Each instinct is to be led as soon as possible 
to its highest manifestation. This is education. The 
best way to do this among boys is to encourage the 
combative individual games, such as foot-racing, wrest- 
ling, swimming, and boxing, and combative team 
games, such as baseball, football, and basket ball. 
Where these games flourish, fighting ceases. Boxing 

10 



Some Adventures among Savages 

has been introduced into the Y. M. C. A. with favor- 
able results. One testimony is typical: "It gives self- 
possession, self-confidence, self-control, courage, and 
fortitude. We have had wonderful results in the sub- 
mission and control of the most violent tempers." 

Weakness is wickedness. The combative instinct, 
satisfied during the transition state by occasional fistic 
encounters, and later in individual and team play, may 
be evolved into schoolroom emulation, conquest over 
difficulties, battles for the right, struggle for the good 
of others. 

"What shall I tell my boy to say then, when he is 
asked to fight?" 

Tell him to be the last one to take hold, and the 
last one to let go. 

"But doesn't the Scripture say: 'Turn the other 
cheek'?" 

Yes, tell him to turn both cheeks, but never to turn 
his back. For, as this world is made up, if you won't 
teach him to fight, you must show him how to sprint. 
Remember that the Scripture also tells us not to cast 
our pearls before swine. 

The author has gone into this matter, unimportant 
in itself, at some length, because this instinct is a good 
illustration of all the instincts. They are the tendrils 
of character. The trite analogy of the tadpole is the 
most forceful one we have. The tadpole has a tail, 
which disappears when he becomes a frog. Apparently 
we might as well amputate this useless and unsightly 
appendage. But if we do, we shall never have a fully 
developed frog. These savage instincts have no place 

11 



Betterment through the Home 

in mature manhood, but if we commit surgery upon 
them, instead of using hygiene, we shall never get real 
manhood. Dr. Balliet was using this very instinct of 
pugnacity once when he said: "If you crush the fight- 
ing instinct, you get the coward; if you let it grow wild, 
you have the bully. If you train it, you have the 
strong, self-controlled man of will." 

It was Dr. Balliet, also, who remarked that the in- 
stincts form what has been known as "original sin." 

Gerald Stanley Lee has said that "the mischief in 
a boy is the entire basis of his education. A boy could 
be made into a man out of the parts of him that his 
parents and teachers are trying to throw away. ' ' Now, 
of course, it is nonsense to say that original sin or any 
other, when it is finished, bringeth forth holiness. The 
query is whether we have been correct in calling mis- 
chief and natural instincts original sins, when their 
chief harm is not that they are wrong, but that we adults 
find them annoying. Is it not possible that if we take 
out of a boy or neglect in our intercourse with him the 
desire to fight, to play, move about, make a noise, and 
find out things by experiment, to whittle, camp out, 
and give shows, we are using surgery where simple 
hygiene is called for? "I am the tadpole of an arch- 
angel," Victor Hugo once extravagantly exclaimed. 
Even in making archangels it seems extremely probable 
that we must expect and await the tadpole stage. If 
the man is to retain a wholesome humanism, it must 
emerge from the joyous savagery of his own childhood. 

This wild animal period, which demands outdoor 
beds at home and loosened seats at school, is doubtless 

12 



Some Adventures among Savages 

the era of a struggle for a physical constitution. All 
the endurance, the reserve power, the tonicity of later 
years is being stored up during these treasure-house 
years between five and twelve. During the last three 
or four of these years, vitality is a little less exuberant. 
They might be called the special period of restful 
growth. Mentally they are somewhat stolid and silent. 
Morally, boys of this period cause less anxiety and con- 
sequently receive less attention than during any other 
period of their lives. 

By thirteen to fourteen in boys, and a year or so 
earlier in girls, we come to a period so startling that 
it can be named as nothing less than the period of 
physical revolution. Its characteristic is that it marks 
the development of sexual maturity. The child as an 
animal is now in the colt stage. There is the most as- 
tonishing growth. A young person will add a cubit 
to his stature without taking thought about it. Nine 
inches of growth in a year is not unusual. This growth 
is uneven. There is a stretching up and out, an in- 
commensurate development of muscle and bone, and a 
consequent awkwardness. There is little strength, but 
great endurance. Even good children seldom die 
young. The child becomes incapable of the more deli- 
cate muscular activities and should be spared indenture 
to fine tasks in shop or school. But the child is quite 
unprepared for what is overtaking him. Consequently 
he is often unhappy and moody and fickle. His growth 
is all the harder to bear, because it is so irregular. It 
seems to come on in waves, usually three in number. 
The lulls between are resting periods. With the flood 
3 13 



Betterment through the Home 

tides come intellectual energy, social yearnings, and 
strong religious feeling. With the ebb is the reaction, 
and there is languor in school, love of solitude, and 
"falling from grace. " It is all of a physical origin, 
and it should be a comfort to anxious parents, torment- 
ed teachers and heartsore youngsters to know that this 
is so. 

What the fast-growing child needs ought to be plain. 
Since the school makes little effort to adjust itself to 
the colt stage, it is sometimes necessary during this time 
to take the boy or girl out for a year. At any rate, there 
must be plenty of good food, almost an excess of sleep, 
plenty of outdoor life, and freedom from exhausting 
tasks. One might urge that there should be complete 
cessation of excitement, but it is a time of emotionalism, 
of desire to go out and be entertained constantly, and 
while pleasures should be kept as simple as possible and 
adjusted to the needs of sleep and planned to be of a 
character which shall keep the child childlike as long 
as possible, it seems to be a psychical hunger to pass 
from periods of excitement to periods of rest. 

We seem to be guided to suppose that, from twelve 
onward, the child, though no longer a savage, is to be 
kept as simple and primitive as possible. He will, if 
unspoiled, still love to camp out, to roam in the woods, 
to spend a summer in the country. We are to temper 
precocity and delay sexuality as long as possible. The 
animal and the passional are in human history older 
than the social and the spiritual, and we reach deeper 
if we can reach to them. We are to continue, even 
through adolescence, to indulge the primeval love of 

14 






Some Adventures among Savages 

strength and athletic prowess, to encourage the boy or 
girl to interpret their still barbarian instincts in forms 
of physical harmoniousness and pure hedonism, and to 
try to help them to be good by making their virtues 
more interesting than their vices. 

REFERENCES 

For the study of the instincts of childhood the following 
are recommended: 

"The Psychology of Child Development, " by Irving 
King. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1903 
(with a full bibliography of children's interests). 

"The Physical Nature of the Child and How to Study 
It," by Stuart H. Rowe. New York: The Macmillan Co., 
1899. 

"Interest and Education," by Charles De Garmo. New 
York: The Macmillan Co., 1902. 

"The Place of the Industries in Elementary Education, " 
by Katherine Elizabeth Dopp. Chicago: The University 
of Chicago, 1902. Studies of industrial education from 
the culture epoch standpoint. 



Ill 

THE YOUNG PRETENDER 

A FRIEND of the writer has remarked that when 
the Almighty made the first man, he made the 
world significant, but that when he made the first 
boy, he made it interesting. He further went on to 
say that if God made man out of dust, He surely made 
boys out of dust and electricity. "It is the electricity 
that constitutes the boy problem." 

The electricity of childhood consists chiefly of Avid- 
ness of Life. The child is alive, and alive all the 
time. His tendency to yell is simply the escape valve 
of periodic physical explosions. He is perfectly 
healthy, having had all the contagious diseases, except 
falling in love. He goes to bed dressed, in order to 
be up in time for the whole of an anticipated to-morrow. 
It is hard to get him to bed at all, he is so afraid some 
fun may happen in the world, while he is asleep, that 
he may miss. It is this, I am sure, more than fears of 
what some one calls "the predatory dark," that makes 
him linger. 

And much of the time when he is awake he is like 
the man Paul knew, caught up into the third heaven, 
and whether in the body or out of the body he cannot 
tell, God knoweth. 

His conception of being grown up is like what Ian 
Maclaren said was the Englishman's idea of heaven, 

16 



The Young Pretender 



a social function to which an invitation is an honor, but 
which it must be highly tiresome to attend. 

To children everything is the Kingdom of Now. 
Materials are gathered from its oldest sources, but they 
are all stamped with to-day. You have heard of the 
Sunday-school teacher who told the story of Elijah, 
with a vividness born of a trained pedagogue's instinct, 
and bethought herself at the close to ask the boys at 
what era they supposed his heroic deeds occurred. 
"Last week," was the unanimous response. 

A kindergartner says that after telling the Christ- 
child story to her group, one little fellow was seen 
waiting quietly in his seat after the others had gone. 
"What are you waiting for, Ernest?" was asked. "I 
am going over to your home wiv you to see vat baby. " 

Can we keep this winsome eagerness, which so few 
adults of our time have succeeded in retaining, or must 
we crush it out in the processes of education? Dr. 
Stanley Hall once said that the real fall of man is to 
do things without zest. Must all humanity forever 
be thus shut from its Garden of Eden? 

This Avidness I have spoken of seems to consist 
in physical vigor and in fancy. Its chief arena is play. 
Our educators are surely not astray in leading the mod- 
ern child to school through the avenue of play. Boys 
really do only three things — eat, sleep, and play. 

I was walking one winter day across Franklin Park 
with a big-eyed boy of seven. His hand was in mine, 
but our steps were centuries apart. The abnormal 
thirst which assails every child whenever he is where 
there isn't any water led him to most ingenious ways of 

17 



Betterment through the Home 

seeking means to slake it. The best way was for me to 
lift him upon a wall and let him drink "like a deer," 
from the snow pools on the hollows on top. Then 
there was the mystery why all the stop-cocks at each 
fountain should be closed just when we needed them so 
much. There were countless questions as to each per- 
son we met, asked in clear tones, while they were yet 
within hearing. There was a running comment indi- 
cating thought that danced, and ran, and skipped 
along as merrily and shallowly as the roadside brook. 
I was, as Mrs. Alice Meynell prettily says, "fellow- 
traveler with a bird. " We emerged in an hour on the 
other side, he a prancing horse attached to reins which 
he had found in his inclusive pockets, and I, the staid 
driver, of whom he was asking tenderly, if I didn't 
think if I rested a wee mite on a settee, I could run a 
little more with him. He ate ferociously three times, 
and at the close of this day, when he was put to bed, 
still declared that "he was so hungry he was going to 
chew paper." The next day he described the trip in 
a letter as follows: 

"Dear Mamma, I went to Franklin Park. I had 
some gelly beans. And we had a ride on the elevator 
and on the leckettoos. And Papa was my horse. And 
I was Papa's horse too. I wished I was up there. I 
will now clothes. Your D ' 

Here we have the vividness and the limitations of 
a child's imagination. I was a horse, and he was a 
horse, but as for the park itself, and the breezy outlooks 
— he was busy with ' ■ gelly beans. ' ' You can get thirty 
of them for a cent, and they do give one an awful thirst 

18 






The Young Pretender 



It seems as though boys live a sort of double life, 
not only the practical, real life of to-day, but the life of 
the fancy. I remember once I was going away to give 
a little talk, and as I came downstairs and stepped into 
my wife's room, I noticed a very funny odor, as though 
something were burning. I came into the chamber, 
and I saw a small company of little people grouped 
over a gas stove, which we sometimes used in the bleak 
easterly room in cold weather. I didn't know what they 
were doing, but I thought I could discern a smell of 
smoked halibut. I was told I was mistaken, it was 
venison; I had come across a hunting party, under their 
mother's leadership, camping on the prairies of 
Wyoming. 

The play of almost all young children seems to have 
behind it what may be called the dramatic or the ad- 
venture-instinct, the desire to impersonate. The boy 
drags a cart, and is a horse; the girl rocks a doll, and 
is a mother. It is by no accident that the imaginative 
years are the social years. Joint play tends to dra- 
matic representation. 

On going upstairs in the country, the author has 
often been confronted by a large brown paper poster 
which reads: 



GREAT SHOW 
AND FEED 

At Two O'clock. 
Admission One Cent. 

19 



Betterment through the Home 

I pay my fee at the door of one of the children's 
chambers, and am asked by the youthful ticket-seller, 
if I care for a reserved seat. In a stage whisper he 
adds, "O, Parp, do take one; if you don't, we'll come 
out short on the refreshments." I deposit the addi- 
tional penny, and am ushered to a seat upon the bed, 
over which is the placard, " First Balcony." The 
rabble is seated on chairs. We are handed programs, 
executed with the expenditure of much muscle and 
saliva. 

First, according to this program, is a "P'rad of 
Ginruls," introducing the entire company. Then fol- 
low recitations, songs, shadow pictures, stereopticon 
and original plays, one of border life and the other of 
conflict with crime in the city. A reminiscence of 
Cooper and the dime novel is traceable in these vigor- 
ously acted dramas. The manipulation of apparatus 
and the movements and dialogue behind the scenes 
are as entertaining to the spectators as the regular acts. 
At the close a plate of delicious plums is passed, for 
which the youngest must have walked two miles in the 
hot sun, and mortgaged all of the proceeds of the en- 
tertainment in advance. 

We may trust the school-teachers to utilize this 
play-instinct to its fullest in the schoolroom, in so far 
as there is opportunity. But it remains for us in the 
home to do what the hurried teacher has little chance 
to do, develop and encourage that side of the instinct 
which is expressed in such dramatic exercises as I have 
described. If we are to have a generation of men who 
are more than money-grubbers, there must be a long 

20 



The Young Pretender 



era of free fancy in childhood, and what with fairies 
driven out of the forests, and the forests themselves 
cut down, and Santa Claus exiled from the home and 
homes unknown in firelight, since we have no more 
firelight in our modern houses, it is a mighty hard thing 
to do. Something may be accomplished by people 
who are willing to try to do what Alice did, after the 
White Rabbit left her — find the golden key, and peer 
once again into that Wonderland where Master Four- 
feetfour lives, into which it is no use to hope to enter, 
unless one performs that feat so much harder than be- 
ing a child, namely, becoming one. 

And the great reason why we must do this is, that 
the boy is such an extremist. If he likes anything, he 
likes it all over, and clear up to the hilt. If it is foot- 
ball, he talks about it all day, and dreams about it all 
night. 

His response to every impulse is more intense than 
that of girls. 

This extremity of the boy's feeling often leads to 
irregular acts. Certain years of the boy's life have 
been called the semi-criminal years. It has been dis- 
covered that the very year which is the acme of the 
criminal period is also the height of the conversion 
period. You can expect anything of a boy at that 
period, and when he is most susceptible to evil he is 
also intensely susceptible to good. 

But as we study this curious inconsistency, we 
notice this one satisfying fact — that every one of these 
passions and motives connects with something else that 
is good, and there you have the key to the situation. 

21 



Betterment through the Home 

The Master spoke of it in one of his parables, when 
he told of the man who had a house in which was an 
evil spirit, and he drove out the spirit and swept the 
house, but instantly seven other spirits, each worse than 
the first, came in. The good drives out the evil, or 
the evil drives out the good. Salvation by displace- 
ment is the great principle for the moral development 
of childhood. 

All childish enthusiasms, if only they can be focused 
on the right things, will drive out the evil. We must 
offer him interpretations of these enthusiasms and 
ideals. The boy does not like to do easy things. All 
the activities of the physical nature are not easy things. 
Our own sensitiveness to hardship holds us back from 
giving the child just what he would really like. Our 
hotel life, our rocking on the verandas, sitting quietly 
at ease, cause us to forget that the child himself wants 
to be intensely active and earnest. 

The nearest approach to that state of mind possible 
to an adult seems to be to keep rested and to try to 
look pleasant. This is the only and very feeble imita- 
tion of perpetual youth which most of us can reach, but 
it may do as a point of contact. It is as important for 
a parent to take time to be happy as to take time to be 
holy. 

"I will now clothes." 

REFERENCES 

Concerning the imaginative side of child life we have 
many interesting details in the following books: 

"The Child: a Study in the Evolution of Man, " by 

22 



The Young Pretender 



Alexander F. Chamberlain. New York: Charles Scribner's 
Sons, 1900. 

"Adolescence," etc., by G. Stanley Hall. New York: 
D. Appleton and Co., 1904. 

' * The Golden Age, ' ' by Kenneth Grahame. New York : 
John Lane, 1900. 

"The Children," by Alice Meynell. New York: John 
Lane, 1897. 

1 ' Memoirs of a Child, ' ' by Annie Steger Winston. New 
York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903. (This child was 
a girl. ) 



IV 

HOW A CHILD DOES HIS THINKING 

THIS is not a treatise on psychology, but there are 
some things which a parent or friend of children 
notices, or ought to notice, which are psychologi- 
cally important. 

We may study the mental characteristic of a child, 
in the two phases of before and during adolescence. 

Before adolescence, the one word to remember is 
Limitation. We fail as parents and teachers more often 
because we do not realize how little a child knows or is 
capable of knowing than from any other reason. Take 
the limitation of vocabulary of a young child. How 
many words do you suppose he knows the meaning of? 
How much of your vocabulary does he understand? 
The very key- word of your discourse may be just the 
word which he has no idea of. He is probably most 
of the time very much in the situation of the young 
typist who easily records what she hears in shorthand, 
but who when she comes to transcribe her notes finds 
that she has lost out most of the nouns. Take the 
limitation of knowledge of objects. The author once 
took a large group of young school children in Boston 
to Franklin Park, and found that a third of them had 
never seen a sheep before. Every tree was to them an 
"ellum," and every flower a chrysanthemum, because 

24 



How a Child Does His Thinking 

these were the only trees and flowers they had ever 
seen. It occurred to him that perhaps it is not so de- 
sirable to teach the Twenty-third Psalm to slum chil- 
dren, unless one substitutes cats for sheep. Take the 
limitation of perspective. A child has no historic sense. 
To us the characters of history are figures standing at 
different distances down a long corridor. To the 
young child they all toe the mark as in a spelling con- 
test, at equal distances from himself. Take the anthro- 
pomorphism of a young child. God is to him a great 
man, perhaps having the figure and characteristics of 
his own father. Spiritual images are to him literal re- 
alities. One child who was told that Christ sits on the 
right hand of God asserted that God must be left- 
handed in consequence. The power of attention in a 
young child is extremely limited. He hops and flies 
about a subject, as a bird does about a lawn. For that 
reason telling is not teaching, and the teaching of young 
children requires constant variety and ingenuity of 
presentation. Then he has almost no reasoning pow- 
ers. He has no frontage, no sense of logical sequence. 
The teacher need not give him reasons, though he 
should himself be reasonable. 

In one faculty only, and that a minor one, do young 
children manifest an absence of limitation, that of ver- 
bal memory. They share their extraordinary capacity 
here with many half-civilized races. The illiterate 
colored plantation man will recall every one of hun- 
dreds of financial transactions with his factor by amount 
and date, so photographically, that the factor is satis- 
fied to correct his own written accounts by the colored 

25 



Betterment through the Home 

man's memory. The writer is told that, in the year 
1848, when the memorizing of Scripture was believed 
in more than now, as the result of a prize offered in a 
Boston Sunday school, over 11,000 verses of the Bible 
were recited by young children in a single month, and 
the prize winner recited 900 separate verses. 

The implications of these facts are plain, and ought 
to be easily applied. We are to be more simple with 
our children. We are to give them fewer ideas at a 
time and to reiterate often. The story method and the 
visual method are to be used constantly. They are to 
be encouraged to tell over what they think they know. 
The fact that they love better to hear an old story than 
a new one and want to hear it in precisely the same 
language is a hint as to the ritual quality of their mem- 
ory. The great word now is Drill, Drill. The gran- 
ary is to be stored full. The treasure house is to be 
enriched for all time. 

And also there must be correlation. Like discov- 
erers in a new country, we shall take many short jour- 
neys from our first anchorage, retracing often, connect- 
ing every new path with an old one, and not venturing 
at any time so far from our starting-point as to get 
lost. 

But during adolescence we come to a reversed con- 
dition. Here the central fact is Limitlessness. The 
vocabulary grows by hundreds of words a week, and 
slang is used to express emotions for which no diction- 
ary seems sufficient. Knowledge grows by leaps and 
bounds, and the child reaches in every direction after 
it. He seems omnivorous. Thomas A. Edison read 

26 



How a Child Does His Thinking 

twelve solid feet into the Detroit Public Library when 
he was a boy, cutting so much of a swath into all knowl- 
edge. The Scientific American becomes a greater favor- 
ite than the American Boy. Attention is voluntary 
and may be continuous. The sense of perspective has 
come, and anthropomorphism is of the past. Verbal 
memory gradually declines, but rational memory takes 
its place, and personal ambition for the first time ap- 
pears, stimulating to research, and guiding in study. 

Interest now, active but fickle, takes the place of 
docility and determines the successful conquest of any 
subject. 

Now the approach of parent or teacher radically 
changes. Now we present many themes and make fre- 
quent changes. The right introduction to any subject 
is everything, as the entire future relation of the young 
person to it depends upon this. The teacher is no 
longer a master, but, for the first time thoroughly, a 
fellow student. And, because the child is now above 
everything else sensitive to personal influences, in 
books and in life, the teacher's great function becomes 
what a fine definition of teaching indicates: "To be 
such a man as men ought to be, and to witness to such 
personalities as men ought to become — that is real 
teaching." 

REFERENCES 

"Fundamentals of Child Study," by E. A. Kirkpatrick. 
New York: The Macmillan Co. , 1907. The best small 
book on the subject. 

"The Psychology of Childhood," by Frederick Tracy. 

27 



Betterrtient through the Home 

Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1904. A standard account 
of child development. 

"Genetic Psychology for Teachers," by Charles Hub- 
bard Judd. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1903. Sug- 
gestive of practical applications. 

' ' Mind in the Making, ' ? by Edgar J. Swift. New York: 
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908. Brilliant, suggestive essays. 



BOOKS AND FIRELIGHT AND CHILDREN'S FACES 

HERE they come pellmell. It is after supper. 
There is a flying skirmish line into the room, 
and then a straight crowding rank in front of 
the fireplace. Their dog follows them, prancing inco- 
herently against the nearest pair of trousers, a small, 
kickable kind of a dog, a cross between a fox-terrier 
and a window mop, yet with a warm, thankful eye that 
wins affection. 

It having been ascertained, finally, from the little 
mother who sits in the shadow that the moral record 
of all is sufficiently stainless to warrant the privilege, a 
dash ensues for a coigne of vantage. In other words, 
there is a wild leap for the broad arms of the story- 
teller's chair, after which the one who got left seats 
himself moodily on the floor against the paternal knee. 
There is an old settee by the wall next to the tongs 
and the blower, where they ought to sit, for if story- 
telling is to be made a delight to him who indulges, it 
must be done looking into children's faces. That row 
of brightly lambent eyes, the self-cuddlings at ecstatic 
moments, the look of awe or tearful pity which admon- 
ishes the talemaker to abridge his climax, and the long 
sigh of contentment closing with a smile at the end — 
these are the tributes given by the most appreciative 
4 29 



Betterment through the Home 

audience that man ever addressed. But they will not 
leave their resting-places. Well do they know that 
there will come moments in the narrative, if it is one 
up to the standard, when they will wish to take a re- 
assuring grip on father's arm as the plot thickens or 
the righteous fall momentarily into dastard clutches. 

There are two kinds of stories which you can tell 
to children under ten — fairy tales and stories of adven- 
ture. Fairy stories first, because they are an actual 
translation of child life, which is fairy life, in its won- 
der, credulity, and lack of boundaries and limitations. 
Andrew Lang has been followed through all his many- 
colored compilations, red, green, blue, and the rest, 
and we have also wandered with Alice in Wonderland, 
with Gulliver among peoples great and small, and with 
Munchausen and Don Quixote on some of their re- 
markable journeys. For children quite rightly believe 
that no fairy stories worth hearing have been told since 
the old days, until somebody out in Chicago a few 
years ago wrote "The Wizard of Oz." And this ex- 
ception, we may judge, is because of the humor and 
not for the fairies. 

A child's humor strikes one as rather elementary. 
If one were to take a vote, they would unanimously 
agree that "The Tar Baby" in Uncle Remus is the 
funniest thing ever written. Maybe it is, yet can you 
say that you would ask for it every night for a fort- 
night, as they do? Their humor seems to be physical, 
the humor of situation. To get some poor deluded 
one into a scrape, like a fox or a father, and with flap- 
ping paws "lie low" like Brer Rabbit, and then watch 

, 30 



Books, Firelight and Children's Faces 

the denouement with shrill, exasperating cries — this is 
the kind of humor that is universal to children, and the 
majority of adults never wholly outgrow it. 

Mostly one tells stories of adventure. Here, too, 
the artist narrator builds upon other men's foundations. 
Perhaps you began with the oldest when the others 
were drinking the milk of human kindness in their long 
clothes by the firelight on Sunday evenings. You 
were an amateur at religious narrative, and didn't know 
how. But he soon showed you. You were to begin 
at the beginning, and sing your song with epic large- 
ness. A tiny forefinger followed your longer one from 
page to page of the picture Bible, pausing at each 
heroic figure with mute query. Then it was that you 
knew first how grandly the Old Testament is a chil- 
dren's book. Suppressing a few genealogies, where 
the lively chronicler fell asleep, and, waking, borrowed 
a few pages from his grandmother's memory, and a 
few rude pictures that he scrawled in an idle moment 
on the margin, these tales are told as great stories ought 
to be told, centering in heroes, moving rapidly through 
events, letting the events do their own moralizing; told 
simply, honestly, fervently, and without wonder or 
homily. 

For a time the Bible may be the child's chief com- 
panion. Together you sweep through the drama of 
Israel, and the tragedy of Jesus, the story-teller as im- 
pressed as his little auditor, as he sees the ages in pan- 
orama. Even now the young scholar, who followed 
his leader by slow and patient reading to attest his ac- 
curacy and review the story, can correct him on many 

31 



Betterment through the Home 

minor details. Joseph, Daniel, and David are the 
great triumvirate who made the pages live. Paul and 
Peter seemed parvenus beside gigantic Samson, wicked 
Jezebel and sturdy Joab. As for Jesus, one would not 
say, as some recent students of childhood have stated, 
that he was less than the others. He was by himself. 
The others were heroes. He was the Good Elder 
Brother. 

But in this manner and at this rate our material is 
soon exhausted. You were surprised to find that a 
day came when the Bible was no longer the favorite 
book. Shocked as you were, you knew the irreverence 
was unintentional. You found that in the Sunday 
school the lads felt the same feeling of knowing all 
that was to be taught. While still convinced that the 
Bible ought to be told to children in large masses, you 
came now to feel that it must be supplemented in the 
church and home by other helpful narratives, until the 
time comes when its poetry and its soul appeal to the 
maturing life. 

But we have left too long our little congregation by 
the fireplace. The dog, young Ishmaelite, has retired 
to his cushion to blink himself into slumber, awaken- 
ing suddenly when the narrator's voice gets loud in the 
battle scenes, to fancy himself in close passage of arms 
with a foe having on his shield a cat rampant. Three 
pairs of eyes are uplifted in solemn expectation. 

"Once upon a time" — All breathe together quick- 
ly. But what this "time"? The story-teller is sur- 
prised to find how much of the great literature of the 
world has already percolated through his mind into 

32 



Books, Firelight and Children's Faces 

theirs. He has related the story of Ulysses, of iEneas, 
of GEdipus, of Argo, of Thor, of King Arthur, of 
Bayard, of the Children's Crusade, of Ivanhoe, of Hia- 
watha, of Robinson Crusoe, of "Pilgrim's Progress," 
Consuelo, "The Cloister and the Hearth," and a hun- 
dred others. All this, too, without definite literary 
. purpose. They were simply best remembered by the 
story-teller, which was one testimony of their worth, 
and they were thoroughly enjoyed by the children, 
which was another. If it were asked which story was 
liked best, one could without a moment's hesitation 
say, of those told, "Treasure Island," of those read 
aloud, "Robinson Crusoe." 

You have also told all the history you know, which 
may be mighty little, and the natural history, which is 
none at all. You have related all of the popular nov- 
els of the day, and if they had a plot worth telling, 
they were well received. Whatever was liked in hear- 
ing was pretty sure to be read afterward. 

The classics that appeal to children teach us how 
to tell them stories. Form and style to them are but 
little; sentiment and poetic description are annoying 
interruptions. First is personality. You must name 
and describe your hero. He is the child himself per- 
sonalized. Then comes action. There must be a 
journey, a combat, a plot. Next is mystery, suspense, 
surprise. Finally the solution. With these simple 
elements anybody ought to tell a tale. They are the 
elements of the classics. 

It is a good thing, after awhile, to settle down to a 
continued story. Beginning with Colonial times, I 

33 



Betterment through the Home 

have portrayed the adventures of a certain Colonel 
Lindsay, who fought in the Revolution, and then went 
over the Alleghanies to the Western Reserve and met 
a series of unparalleled adventures with the Indians in 
his home. 

To-night, for example, I am describing an attack 
on Marietta, that took place while our mythical hero 
was away. The eyes brighten as the gathering of the 
tribes is described. The children gather closer to me 
as Colonel Lindsay's capture far from home is related. 
The brave defense of the beleaguered garrison, under 
the lead of the Colonel's young son, brings cheers of 
approbation which arouse the dog. Then there is the 
Colonel's skillful, silent escape, and his return in dis- 
guise to the neighborhood of his home. The children 
look into the fire as the great battle day comes with its 
wild charges, the rolling up of the farm wagons, loaded 
with burning hay against the stockade, the break at the 
gate, and the almost miraculous appearance of the brave 
Colonel with hurried reinforcements to turn the tide 
and win the victory. 

This is all simple, rather crude, you say. But it is 
the only kind the children want. Stories about cats, 
birds, flowers, and girls may win a yawning attention, 
but it is life, strong, brave, and conquering, that is 
desired. I think the craving is in the main whole- 
some. The children are actually contemporaries of the 
pioneers and the savages. They need a certain amount 
of excitement to satisfy their emotions. They 
strengthen in character, in endurance, and valor, as they 
dwell with the brave and the true. Any amount of 

34 



Books, Firelight and Children's Faces 

moral nobility may be portrayed, but not preached to 
them. 

Story telling soon develops a particular kind of self- 
activity, which might be called the story game. A 
good story would be acted out as a play the next Satur- 
day. If the children saw a good drama, they insisted 
on adding some more acts to it at home. 

They begin to write stories themselves. 

You should have a big blank book, on the title 
page of which you may write, "The New Crusoe." 

First, we imagine that we have been wrecked on an 
unknown island, and while we are drawing a rough 
sketch of the wreck, the children are deciding the best 
things to take ashore. Of course, in the haste of leav- 
ing, it is hard to think of everything, but as we cannot 
supply any needs later, except by our own ingenuity, 
we must be as self-possessed as possible. The leader's 
part all through is to listen and put down what is de- 
cided upon. He makes no suggestions himself, un- 
less everybody else is cornered. Indeed the story al- 
most tells itself. 

Each night the map of the country may be extended 
as far as they have explored it. The children shall 
name all the points of interest. Several maps will be 
needed before we get through, to show particular dis- 
tricts more clearly. 

We camp the first night close by the shore under a 
tent of old tarpaulin. We are busy for a week in bring- 
ing our goods ashore before the ship broke up. But 
our tent was entirely unsheltered, and far from fresh 
water. As soon as we had cleared the wreck of every - 

35 



Betterment through the Home 

thing, even the bolts and beams, we began to take short 
exploring trips. We followed up wandering Wiggle 
Brook until we came to a cool spring in the forest, on 
a considerable hill. This hill, since we found in the 
mud near the spring a human footstep, we named Foot- 
step Hill. Here we pitched our camp, hither removed 
our possessions. 

After awhile we pastured our flocks and herds in 
the Grassy Meadow to the east of us, but being much 
troubled by wild beasts, and still fearing wild men, we 
finally removed our whole establishment to a Tree 
House and stockade which we built on the higher hills 
farther from the water. We still overlooked the sea, 
however, and our American flag waved constantly aloft 
as a signal to any passing ship. 

There is not time to tell you of the strange way a 
young Prince of the Island came and made his home 
with us, and first made us aware of the bloodthirsty 
tribe that lived over the lofty Donjon Mountains to- 
ward the south. Nor can I relate the life story of the 
venerable white hermit, believed by those savages a 
demon of witchcraft, who dwelt at the top alone, in his 
mountain cave. Are not all these written in the 
Chronicles of the New Crusoe by Archie, Davie, and 
Jack? 

The story still goes on. Often we take up the 
book and find, in a child's laggard handwriting, a new 
adventure or a bold sketch of some fresh affray. 

At any time of day or night, one needs only make 
some such remark as, "Do you remember what we did 
the morning we found the charmed necklace at the 

36 



Books, Firelight and Children's Faces 

foot of the tree in the stockade?" and they are off like 
a shot. Sometimes they seem to live two lives along- 
side at once. 

All this, as may be imagined, makes an introduc- 
tion not only to good books, but also to fullness of life. 
It will not be an infallible antidote to cheap books. 
There comes a highly colored age when highly colored 
books, like nickel novels, make their appeal, but they 
are a literary measles, soon gotten over. Most of them 
to-day are clean, some of them patriotic, and a few of 
them mildly informing. They are said to be an "in- 
citement," but is incitement entirely an evil? If a 
boy has enough good and interesting things to do every 
day, the incitement of books will not mislead him, and 
may give him some energy. 

We hope that the school will some time learn a way 
of teaching good English that will not cause it to be of 
lifelong repulsiveness to high-school graduates, but in 
the meantime the privilege is ours in the home to bring 
unobtrusively to the attention of our young people the 
best books, by gift, through the family library and es- 
pecially by reading them aloud together and living in 
them until their real strength is appreciated and the 
children absorb a taste, which if not infallible shall at 
least be sane and pure. 

Well, now the story is done, and the riotous crew, 
with many backward looks, have been driven up the 
stairs, making several sorties on the way, and coming 
back during the next hour in complete deshabille on 
various impossible errands. The silent shadows rise 
and fall from the lamp in the hallway outside their 

37 



Betterment through the Home 

doors, where the little dog sleeps on watch, and the 
starlight shines in among the beams through their 
opened windows. 

After father and mother have together beheld the 
embers grow rosy and heard the old clock repeat its 
solemn monitions till it strikes the silver chime of ten, 
they go up, and see that the lads are safe for the night. 
The oldest has pinned a picture of Giant Grim out of 
"Pilgrim's Progress" on his door as a guardian, and 
sleeps uneasily, with his percussion-cap pistol in his 
grasp. In the next room his younger brother is still 
wearing his baseball cap on his head, while incongru- 
ously clasping his doll to his breast. The bed of the 
youngest is empty. He is found on the floor nearby, 
stretched out in calm repose, with stains on his cheeks 
that speak of ginger cookies, and an odor of sanctity 
that suggests salt codfish. 

REFERENCES 

"How to Tell Stories to Children, " by Sarah Cone 
Bryant. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1905. 

"Telling Bible Stories, " by Louise Seymour Houghton. 
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907. 

"Stories to Tell to Children," by Sarah Cone Bryant. 
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1907. 

"Books for Boys and Girls Approved by the Brooklyn 
Public Library." Brooklyn: The Public Library, 1911. 

' ' Stories and Story Telling, ' ' by Angela M. Keyes. New 
York: D. Appleton and Co., 1911. 



VI 

THE GANG 

THERE is nothing an ordinary boy dislikes more 
than to be alone. One reason why it is good for 
boys to go to church when they do not understand 
the sermon is because it obliges them to be by them- 
selves for an hour. But this longing to be with others 
has its meaning and its value also. 

Many writers lately have been studying this gre- 
gariousness of children. They live together in tribes, 
with treaty relations with their elders, and act, like the 
Indians, in confederacies. On a certain day in late 
November, the telephone poles in our cities are decor- 
ated with weird totems of dangling turkey legs. Pea- 
shooters and marbles come with Ash Wednesday, and 
just as regularly. They disappear in their time as sud- 
denly as the penances of Lent at Easter. The toy-store 
trade bows in subjection to unwritten statutes, and with- 
holds its penny whistles and kites until the mandate 
has been whispered. Many of these customs are of 
general and unknown antiquity, seeming to show that 
not only in every land is there at our knees this tribal 
barbarism, but also, as some one else has said, that the 
town of Boyville is older than Nineveh or Tyre. 
Ancient Spartan state-boundaries were not more defi- 
nite than those between modern gangs. 

39 



Betterment through the Home 

When you were in school you belonged to a gang. 
The boys or girls who belonged with you were proba- 
bly no richer, no better, no brighter than the rest, but 
they were your set — exclusive, superior, leagued in 
unquestioning loyalty. 

The heyday of the gang is between ten and seven- 
teen years of age. It does not come earlier, because be- 
fore that time the child is a savage individualist. The 
social instinct dawns gradually, and the play of young 
boys often seems to consist mostly of quarrelling and 
of getting ready. It evolves unto the broad generosity 
of the team play of football and the sacrifice hit of base- 
ball. The further boundary of the gang period seems 
to be at about seventeen, because that is the time when 
child friendships are broken up by going to work and 
to college, adult societies are receiving the young peo- 
ple, and friendship now becomes more particular in the 
pairing instinct, of chum with chum, and of boy and 
girl. 

The basis of the gang is play. The activities 
are therefore seasonal, and when they are unhampered 
they offer many interesting analogies to those of 
savage tribes, which they resemble in their organ- 
ization. This play, as has been said, shows a de- 
veloping sociality, and so the classification of the his- 
tory of child play into three chapters is no doubt 
accurate: the savage and individual, the self-assert- 
ive, and the loyal. These activities are joint ex- 
pressions of the primitive instincts, especially the 
constructing, the dramatic, and the predatory. The 
gang is informally governed by a chieftain, the strong- 

40 



The Gang 

est boy or a trusted adult who has been adopted into 
the tribe. 

The group-spirit of girls is no less actual than that 
of boys, but they tend more to engage in indoor play, 
in the presence of their mothers, and in activities more 
refined and further removed from savagery than do 
boys. Their groupings are also more exclusive, though 
perhaps fully as temporary as those of boys. 

The gang is sacred as an expression of the friend- 
ship-making capacity of mankind. This capacity is 
not born with us, and it too soon dies out. It marks 
the coming of the child out of the little, self-centered 
years of childhood, into the larger life of the neighbor- 
hood, the community, and of society. It is doubtful 
if the only child, brought up away from other children 
with a tutor, can ever become a true friend, a generous 
citizen, a real philanthropist, without some experience 
in childhood which shall expose him to the gang. 

The significance of the gang, as it is watched by 
parents and philanthropists, is its moral significance. 
Its genesis is play, which helps explain its fascination. 
Its fundamental element is loyalty, which sometimes 
is nothing more than organized selfishness and which 
always involves protection of a comrade, whether he is 
right or wrong. Loyalty to the gang often means bel- 
ligerence against other gangs, and hostility to adults. 
This loyalty carries with it a codification of conduct. 
The gang lays its laws not only upon the group, but 
upon the individual, and they are far reaching. These 
laws partly are evolved through the mob-spirit, that 
blind, conscienceless movement, which among men 

41 



Betterment through the Home 

has always meant revolution and often ruin. This 
mob-spirit not only may start the child in illegal 
courses, but it protects him when he follows them. 
The code of the gang is also largely shaped by its 
leader, who is usually the most forceful member, or 
who may be an adult outsider, of good or evil inten- 
tions. 

Something is said in Chapter X about the oppor- 
tunity to utilize the gang spirit in social work. The 
home must also take cognizance of it. Parents ought 
to get acquainted with its members, shelter its indoor 
meetings, and suggest and chaperon its activities. It 
is usually not difficult to do this, and those who do so 
perform a great personal and social service. 

Children are extremists, and never more so than in 
their conjunct life. It is the unregulated gang that 
more than anything else is the nursery of our vagrants 
and vagabonds, our thieves and social enemies. It is 
through the gang, that boys get into evil surroundings, 
and that girls go wrong. There is little vice that is 
purely individual. On the other hand, goodness is a 
conjunct virtue. The church consciously or uncon- 
sciously builds its activities upon this fact, and religious 
decisions in youth are almost invariably comrade de- 
cisions. This fact has its important influences in char- 
acter development. Through it the strong of will are 
made stronger as they come to realize their leadership, 
the weak of will are reinforced and carried farther 
up than they would go alone, and the group leagues 
itself as heartily for goodness as it might otherwise for 
evil. 

42 



The Gang 



REFERENCES 

"The Boy Problem, " by William Byron Forbush. Bos- 
ton: The Pilgrim Press, 1907. Discusses the nature and 
utilization of the gang. 

"The Institutional Activities of American Children, " 
by Henry D. Sheldon. Worcester: The American Journal of 
Psychology, 1899. 



VII 

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF A CHILD 1 

RELIGION is integral with a child. It is not an 
ornament pinned on, nor a virtue or a faculty 
superadded. There was not a time when it had 
to be inserted, nor is there ever a time when it ceases 
to be present. As Phillips Brooks used to love to say, 
"Children are white spotted black, and not black 
spotted white." 

The writer has found it a simple way to study the 
psychology of religion in a child to make use of this 
chart (on the next page), which is partly his own, and 
partly composed by Professor George W. Fiske on 
the basis of Professor Edward P. St. John. It is accu- 
rate for boys rather than for girls. 

The little child is chiefly a bundle of instincts. His 
religious ideas are at first strangely analogous to those 
of savage peoples. He personalizes his toys, he carries 
fetiches in his pocket, he believes in miracles, and his 
active imagination recounts them. His religious nature 
consists mostly in the sense of dependence, his religious 
life in doing what he is told is right. His religious 
outlook is simply that of his own personality, which he 

1 Much of the material of this chapter has been gathered from another 
work of the author ( ' ' The Boy Problem " ) , in which a similar study 
was undertaken. 

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45 



Betterment through the Home 

serves constantly. In this age of fairy tale, which cor- 
responds to the myth-making period in human history, 
religion is interpreted to him by stories, and he begins 
to submit in docility to the moral code that he sees 
practiced around him. 

So at about ten he enters the period of religion as 
habit. The Olympians are constantly telling him what 
to do and not to do, and he does as they say sometimes, 
and always as they do. It is the age of law, the Old 
Testament period. He says his prayers, he learns 
whatever the Sunday school or the home teaches, and 
he believes what he is told. He has begun now to dis- 
criminate between his parents and God, but his desire 
to be good is chiefly because it pleases those whom he 
loves. 

One summer day a little boy came home from the 
district school, with war in his heart, and trouble in 
his eye. Nobody knows what was the matter, to this 
day. The sins as well as the virtues of childhood have 
mostly a physical basis. But there was a wild hour, 
during which he broke all the Commandments within 
reach. Then followed banishment, imprisonment, and 
an endeavor to ignore the crime and the criminal, in- 
terrupted by the discovery that he was dangling from 
the window twenty feet from the ground. The bars 
being strengthened, reflection and silence were left to 
work their cure. The night brought no better coun- 
sels. The spirit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils 
was all in that wild, little heart. The night passed on, 
and the day saw no change. There was really more 
distress without than within the prison. The parent, 

46 



The Religious Life of a Child 

not the sinner, suffered. At length, late in the after- 
noon, a stricken, small figure came slowly down the 
stairs. He bore an epistle, crumpled and tear-stained, 
and in an uncertain hand. It read: 



I LOVE YOU, MAMMA. 



After the Voiceless reconciliation that followed, the 
boy explained it all. "The Devil has gone out of me. " 
Perhaps these were unnecessarily theological terms in 
which to describe this little moral duel. It is all told 
beforehand in the fifteenth of Luke. He went away 
into the far country, and he came back, and his mother 
was glad, and they made merry. The penitence of 
a child is hearty but transitory. His little sins are 
as much a surprise to him as they are a grief to us. 
They are mostly the product of childish ailments, or 
the result of a web of circumstances in which the child 
finds himself quite innocently entangled. As Boss 
Tweed confessed in the Tombs prison, "I tried to be 
good, but I had hard luck." In the meantime we 
must habituate him to right conduct through good ex- 
amples and to religious observances, rejoice in the dear, 
uncovenanted graces of his heart, furnish him vacant 
formularies which he will first grotesquely and then 
maturely populate, and give him thus the materials and 
the skill for building life. Good will and good con- 
duct sum up his religious history during the period of 
habit. 

47 



Betterment through the Home 

There is a short period in early adolescence, which 
we have named the period of sentiment. It is parallel 
with the bodily revolution of that time. Then is the 
first time when conversion is apt to occur, and when it 
does, it is accompanied by strong feeling. It is the 
time when the child is especially influenced by a hero. 
It is also the time when he is more influenced in his 
religious decisions by the gang than a little later. His 
conversion does not noticeably perhaps affect his con- 
duct because he is living in the period of emotionalism 
rather than of will power. It is the birthright of his 
soul, however, in this springtime age that he should 
feel strongly on the highest themes. 

By middle adolescence we come to what Professor 
Fiske has called "The Self- Assertive Period" and 
which I have called, in the child's religious develop- 
ment, "The Period of Religion as Will." Now, as 
Dr. Coe suggests, he really begins to "personalize his 
religion." He is now something more than one in- 
teger of a religious gang. Conversion now, as Coe 
again suggests, is not so much the word for his religious 
development as "commitment." "It is a ratification 
rather than a reversal. " The child is now struggling 
for an individuality of his own, religious as well as 
otherwise. He is on the quest for himself. It is "the 
fool period." It is an anti-domestic era. Never is a 
child more unwilling to take advice, and never does he 
need it more. It is most of all the era of the birth of 
the will. It is the crisis of life; as Lancaster says, "the 
focal point of all psychology." The change is not in 
a merely theological attitude. It comes to Jew and 

48 



The Religious Life of a Child 

Christian alike, and it exists in other realms than those 
regarded as religious. In matters of the choice of 
vocation, personal attachments, change of school or of 
residence, new resolve as to study or work, figures 
would show that most of the permanently influential 
choices of life come during these few years. The re- 
sult of this establishment of the personal will should be 
a first hand relation to righteousness. The man now 
should obey himself. It should hereafter be "I must/' 
not "You must," with him. He should have the 
power of self-propulsion. 

And now, in later adolescence and after, he comes 
to the thoughtful period of religion. The doubt period 
is said to come to its climax at eighteen. It is the time 
of physical and mental reconstruction and settling down 
to maturity. The youth has discovered himself and 
his world, and now he begins to relate himself to his 
world. His religion is not merely individual, it is 
friendly, neighborly, and ought to be generous and 
social. 

This summary relates the course of a normal child, 
brought up in wholesome surroundings and exposed 
to the moral and religious influences of a good com- 
munity. His development has been watched and 
guided by sympathetic parents, and he has been helped 
gently and patiently in the home and the church to pass 
easily from one period to another, gaining what each 
has for the enrichment of his life, meeting none pre- 
maturely and getting sidetracked in none unnecessarily. 
It is needless to say that multitudes of children fail of 
receiving all of their religious birthright. The home, 

49 



Betterment through the Home 

during the habit-making years, when imitativeness is 
everything, may be a school of vice, and so the child 
may lose all opportunity to make a conscience. The 
religious feelings may be rudely stifled during the emo- 
tional days, and so the child delayed in his religious 
experience until, as an adult, he comes through the aus- 
terity of conviction and experience into a real religious 
life, forever lamenting that its youthful exuberance can 
never now be his. Or the child may be hurried in his 
immaturity through a revival whirlwind or into church 
membership, and later revolt from this forcing process 
or always retain somewhat of the falsetto about his re- 
ligious life. He may, in an unreligious home or through 
absence from Sunday school, never get any knowledge 
of the spiritual treasures of the Scriptures, or arriving 
into the church, after a childhood when he had never 
entered its doors, learn that he is too late to feel the 
warmth and splendor of historic services and forms of 
worship. And he may have been exposed to a concep- 
tion of the religious life which has persuaded him 
that it is a matter of self-preservation, and so remain a 
self-seeker always, incapable of philanthropy or service. 
It is the personality of the mother that originates 
in the child his first and most permanent idea of God. 
Later he turns to his father. The home is the school 
of the personal habits, the nursery of religious feelings, 
the matrix of the will. The day of formal religion in 
the home seems to have passed with the day of formal 
discipline in the school. Many of us fathers feel our- 
selves temperamentally incapable of establishing "the 
family altar," though it is to be hoped that most 

50 



The Religious Life of a Child 

mothers still love to teach their children to pray. But 
informal means are still left to us. The Bible is still 
the great story book and picture book for little children. 
Sunday may be at least a day of sanity and rest. The 
new love of nature gives us a link between ourselves, 
the children and God. If there is less respect and obedi- 
ence of parents than once, perhaps we who are parents 
now find it easier to unbend and be good comrades than 
our fathers did, and there is much religious help to a 
child, when he becomes old enough to realize that his 
father is not infallible, but that he, too, is engaged in 
making moral experiments and that his own struggles 
for good are actually shared by his parent. Then 
church is more childlike now, the services have some 
regard for the presence of children, the Sunday school 
is more human and skillful, and the social life of many 
of our churches is both safe and delightful. It is an age 
of dangerous wealth and luxury, but it is not without 
its great incentives. Public morality is more sensitive 
than even in "the good old days," the colleges and the 
press are full of social enthusiasm, and the great tasks 
of our time are a challenge to the strongest, the purest, 
and the best in our young people. It is a better world 
to live in, and a much bigger world to serve in than 
ever before. 

REFERENCES 

"Education in Religion and Morals, " by George A. 
Coe. Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1904. An excel- 
lent study not only of religious development but also of 
religious pedagogy. 

51 



Betterment through the Home 

4 'Studies in Adolescent Boyhood, " by Hanford M. 
Burr. Springfield: The Seminar Publishing Co., 1909. 
Especially devoted to religious development. 

"The Psychology of Religion, " by Edwin D. Starbuck. 
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899. Contains oft- 
quoted figures and facts about conversion. 

"A Boy's Religion from Memory/ ' by Rufus M. 
Jones. Philadelphia: Ferris and Leach, 1900. Tender, 
personal recollections. 



VIII 

THE WANDER YEARS 

AMONG the types of children which cause anxiety 
or are most difficult to understand and handle is 
the one which is known to us through a great 
parable as "the prodigal." Such a child is usually 
neither sluggish nor abnormal, but endowed with ex- 
ceptional vigor and precocity. The prodigal years are 
especially between fourteen and eighteen, with their 
culmination at sixteen, which Swift regards as "a pe- 
riod of semi-criminality, normal for all boys who are 
healthy," and which Hall calls, "an age of temporary 
insanity." It is a time when the child becomes secre- 
tive, because he neither can nor will utter himself. 
His physical energy and outdoor pangs drive him into 
an anti-domestic frame of mind, and he seems to seek 
any companionship rather than that of his own home. 
He pursues pleasure so voraciously that he appears 
usually to be abnormally excited. His whole time is 
given to joy. His superlatives — vociferous playing, 
omnivorous reading, passionate dogmatism — make his 
parents seem like grubbers beside him. He is the 
only one in the house who has superfluous energy, and 
living with him is disconcerting, and requires many 
readjustments. To his father he seems chiefly devoted 
to the by-products, and his pleasures are likely to be 

53 



Betterment through the Home 

expensive in a number of ways. His parents feel that 
he is missing almost everything in life which they re- 
gard as important, though it cannot be denied that he 
is getting a good deal which they themselves missed. 

His activities are, no doubt, the play spirit gone 
wild. He is keenly desirous to know the world and to 
fathom himself. Both his reading and his dreams place 
him within an aura of baseless romance, and with the 
passions of a man and the self-restraint of a child, the 
vigor of a man and the judgment of a boy, he is ripe 
for any course of conduct which suggests itself to him. 
The special influences which may affect and determine 
his conduct during these years are varied. He may be 
suffering from too much luxury and ease and too much 
spending money, which have resulted in an utter de- 
pendence upon others, and an absolute ignorance of the 
cost and value of money. He may have become spoiled 
by too much play and athletics for serious work, or been 
bored by the impracticalness of school. He is as yet 
unable to realize the necessity of vocational training, 
and is not old enough to focus upon the choice of a 
calling. 

A boy or a girl in this trying situation is likely to 
drift into one of a number of different courses. He 
may play truant constantly, or through persistent con- 
tumacy drop out of step with the school program. He 
may run away from home, suffering hardships joyously, 
and engage in all kinds of occupations. It is to be 
hoped that this becomes an inoculation, and that it is 
sufficiently satisfying to learn what the wages of sin are 
from observation. He may, at home or elsewhere, 

54 



The Wander Years 



become dissipated, seeking to express his zest or to 
cure his sorrows or to stimulate his exhausted body by- 
drugs or drink. In any case he is likely to enter into 
many changes, perhaps failing in one school after 
another, or in one position after another, and showing 
a discouraging lack of special aptitude for anything in 
particular. 

This is the most difficult problem which the home 
or the school faces. The condition is, no doubt, 
natural with multitudes of full-blooded young people. 
It represents a stage of irresponsibility and absence of 
judgment, and it is peculiarly hard to handle because 
it generally involves loss of confidence in the adult 
friend on the part of the child, as it generally does lack 
of patience in the case of the adult toward the child. 

There is this encouragement — that the stage is as 
transitory as it is natural. By the eighteenth year the 
child usually begins to recover, and sometimes the re- 
turn to common sense and a serious view of life is 
startlingly sudden, though the boy or girl who has 
suffered from childhood from an immoral or otherwise 
unhelpful environment may become during this 
period a life-long victim of vice or weakness. Such 
is the potency of early habit that it is probably extremely 
seldom that the child of a good home suffers permanent 
injury from passing through this period of vagabond- 
age. It has been interpreted by some as the inevitable, 
and not always miserable pathway, through which all 
youth must walk to the real heritage of the Father's 
House. During this period of alienation, which is not 
necessarily one of sin, all children may perhaps become 

55 



Betterment through the Home 

familiar with their world and their opportunity, and 
learn to know themselves, their neighbor and their 
Father. 

It is well for every parent to forecast such an era as 
probable. The docile years between eight and twelve 
have given most of us little preparation for this season 
of storm and stress. If we knew that it was coming, 
and more of us would remember how it once came to 
ourselves, if we would study its significance and plan 
how to deal with it, we should be not only forewarned, 
but forearmed. The English of the well-to-do classes 
practically avoid the problem by sending their sons 
and daughters away to the great endowed schools, while 
they are still in the period of docility, and allowing 
schoolmasters to handle this situation in their stead. 
The majority of Americans are unat>le or unwilling to 
solve the problem in this way. We shall evidently 
mitigate the situation somewhat if we keep life as 
simple as possible for our children, give them as much 
as we can of country conditions, and expose them, es- 
pecially in the summer-time, to a degree of hardship 
in the camp or on the farm, or possibly by travel vol- 
unteer to bring before them the great world which they 
seek to know. Most important of all is our own com- 
panionship. "We tend now," as Dr. Clyde W. 
Votaw says, "more to live with our children, instead 
of above them. We count them as within the domain 
of the Golden Rule, and do to them as we would have 
them do to us." We also begin to enjoy them. 

The workingman, when he finds his son restless 
or unsuccessful in school, usually cuts the matter short 

56 



The Wander Years 



by putting him to work, and perhaps this is not the 
least sensible way to deal with the question with boys 
of every class. If the boy is a misfit in school, if he 
is simply marking time there, and if he is determined 
either to play or to wander, a dose of actuality may be 
just the cold-water bath which he needs. The tempta- 
tion of most of us when we meet a difficulty for which 
we are not sure that we are adequate is to spend money 
in the endeavor to get our problem solved for us. 
There is a temptation with difficult boys and girls, who 
are restless in school, to send them to some other school 
which either advertises its ability to deal with excep- 
tional children or else has a good reputation for doing 
so. Sometimes such a course is necessary, and the 
regular discipline or simple life of a military academy 
or a country preparatory school may work out the re- 
sults which we seek. On the other hand they suggest 
to the child the possibility of solving his problem by 
avoiding it. Companionships or schools where not 
only our own difficult child is a pupil, but many others 
are also, are not always uplifting, and the transference 
of our own problem to the shoulders of another often 
turns out to be simply a postponement. 

A child who is old enough to be fractious is old 
enough to begin to face some responsibilities. One of 
the most effective ways to cause a realization of this is 
by a financial adjustment. Some young children re- 
ceive small allowances for their own pleasures. The 
author knows of a number of parents who, during this 
period, have deliberately and carefully figured out the 
amount necessary for all the expenditures of the child, 

57 



Betterment through the Home 

and have given this to the child weekly as an inclusive 
allowance. In order to make this effective, it is well 
to make the sum assigned no larger than absolutely 
necessary, but to supplement it with possibilities of 
paid service. The moral effect of this plan is far-reach- 
ing. The child who was before a beggar, with inordi- 
nate requests, now becomes a capitalist, determining 
his own needs and pleasures. This changes his whole 
attitude toward his parent. It calls up the situation as 
to his indulgences, and offers him the constant stimulus 
of an opportunity, either to earn and enjoy, or to earn 
and save more money. What he is after all seeking 
and is beginning to be entitled to is independence, 
and this financial arrangement is both just and is a 
symbol of his situation in life. 

It is impossible to state the wisest course to pursue 
in the case of such an individual. The most thought- 
ful parent finds that his plans have to be somewhat ex- 
temporaneous, and that he modifies them daily, as he 
gathers new light upon the subject. Some young 
people by going to work for awhile learn the value of 
school or of money, or discover their proper vocation. 
Schools like Abbotsholme in England, and the Inter- 
laken School in this country, offer a variety of manual 
effort, investigation of industrial conditions, simple liv- 
ing, and cooperation, which becomes a specific for just 
such cases. A combination of simplicity, patient com- 
panionship, and a just but stringent financial allowance, 
while retaining the child at home, will sometimes fur- 
nish a salutary course of education. Some seem to be 
satisfied with nothing else than actual wandering afar. 

58 



The Wander Years 



In such instances it seems to be necessary to let the boy 
have free course and insist upon his providing for him- 
self, while at the same time unobtrusively surrounding 
him with as many friends and helpful influences as pos- 
sible. It is not so dangerous for a bright-minded boy 
to go out into the world and earn his living as some 
parents suppose. 

A religious conversion may or may not be an anti- 
dote to this wander period. If conversion occurs early 
in the period of emotionalism, it seems sometimes 
to have little effect upon conduct, and is not likely just 
at this time to furnish a visible restraint. Should a 
strong religious conviction intervene later, it would 
probably mark the cloudburst which would clear the 
air. The interest of a first love now may be a dis- 
turbing or a quieting influence. Sometimes it seriously 
complicates the individual problem, and again, es- 
pecially if it comes toward the age of eighteen, it tends 
to strengthen stability and define the purposes of the 
preparative years that ensue. 

REFERENCES 

"Adolescence, " etc., by G. Stanley Hall. New York: 
D. Appleton and Co. , 1904. The epoch-making book which 
is a treasury of information about its theme. 

' ' Mind in the Making, ' ' by Edgar J. Swift. New York: 
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908. Has chapters on geniuses 
and exceptional children. 

"Growth and Education, " by J. M. Tyler. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1907. 



59 



IX 

THE MODERN HOME 

THE modern city home offers many startling con- 
trasts to the old farmhouse in the country. Since 
at least half our population is already living in 
city conditions, it is the city home that is becoming the 
typical one of the twentieth century. While the farm- 
house suffered from isolation and lacked many conven- 
iences and comforts, and often could afford its children 
only meager schooling and social advantages, it pos- 
sessed some very great and precious essentials. It was 
set in the primitive environment of nature. It was 
itself a social microcosm, the parents being the priests, 
the healers and the teachers, the comrades and the part- 
ners of their children. The district school was a minor 
affair educationally, compared with the varied education 
furnished by the work and play of the farm. President 
G. Stanley Hall has enumerated sixty trades, the ele- 
ments of which were familiar to farm children four 
score years ago. Here there was no caste, no class 
spirit. The children shared their parents' anxieties, 
work and pleasure, and gradually, before they were of 
age, became familiar with financial transactions, and 
became the actual owners of live stock and tools. They 
were ready upon maturity to marry, conduct house- 
holds, and take up new farms of their own. Or they 

60 



The Modern Home 



were fitted, in resource and "faculty," to learn trades 
easily or manage businesses, and were mentally alert and 
physically strong to prepare rapidly for college and, as 
was usually necessary, to work their way through. So 
satisfactory and efficient was this simple training for life 
that we have been in the habit of expecting that the 
biographies of our national leaders shall open with a 
picture of a log cabin. 

The village or city home is very different. It 
means that the child and his parents are transported 
from the environment of nature to the mechanical one 
of urban life. Nearness to nature, care of living things, 
contemplation, have ceased. As Dr. Charles De 
Garmo remarks, "Change of season may mean now 
nothing more than an exchange of discomforts, or at 
most of clothing; the crowded schoolroom has usurped 
the place of the open field, and the work once done 
with the hand, is now replaced by that done by the 
head." The home as a fixed location is ceasing to ex- 
ist. City children are born in maternity hospitals. 
An ever-smaller proportion of homes is owned by the 
occupants, one-tenth in New York City, and compara- 
tively few are the children who mature in the houses 
in which they had their infancy. Not only are there 
no household crafts and no tasks done by parents and 
children in comradeship, but what work is left is the 
dreary household drudgery. The home no longer 
satisfies its own physical needs. It depends upon the 
grocery and delicatessen stores, the bakery, and the res- 
taurant, the public laundry, and the dry-goods store 
for its food, cleanliness, and clothing. This freedom 
6 61 



Betterment through the Home 

to the housewife means emancipation, not only in the 
home, but from the home. The house has lost the 
guest-room, and hospitality has become minimized. 
It is confined to the dinner, the afternoon tea, or the 
social call, and it means acquaintanceship but not friend- 
ships. Many of the fellowships of the home are out- 
side its walls: shopping, the club, the theater, the park 
or amusement resort, the social center in the school- 
house, the saloon. The home has distinctly relegated 
its teaching function to the school, and its function of 
religious nurture to the church. In these respects, as 
Dr. Shailer Mathews says, "our modern civilization 
has moved toward the ideals of Plato's 'Republic' " 

Some serious moral losses are involved in modern 
domestic [ conditions. There is the loss of loyalty. 
The transitory home has no neighbors. When sanitary 
or social conditions offend, the family does not en- 
deavor to reform them, it moves. The church cannot 
gain the attention of those who do not abide long 
enough to start to pay pew rent. Another loss is sym- 
pathy. The apartment house has somewhat of the ap- 
pearance and inaccessibility of a castle. Its consequence 
is a new feudalism. The inmates live in greater com- 
fort and isolation than feudal lords. They are sur- 
rounded by uniformed retainers. Charity appeals can 
reach them only by mail, and suffering is shut out by 
lace curtains. Then there is the loss of personal re- 
sponsibility. There are no chores for man or child. 
A man cannot be a good citizen who has no sidewalk 
to shovel. The wife has lost all the beautiful house- 
wifely tasks, and her hands and heart become empty. 

62 



The Modern Home 



The children have too much, and do too little. But the 
most serious loss is that of companionship in the home 
itself. There is a downtown husband and an uptown 
wife. One recalls George Eliot's brilliant remark that 
" There is no greater strain of friendship than a differ- 
ent taste in jokes." The family fails to share not only 
jokes, but any serious interests. The mother's life 
tends to be crowded with an overinterestedness in 
things that put the children in a secondary place, and 
the father returns at night to his family physically and 
mentally too tired to enjoy them. At the worst, the 
child is brought up by maidservants and butlers, and 
at the best he has no room to play. It is probably the 
friction of city life which largely accounts for the in- 
crease in divorces, which already cause one out of every 
twelve family histories to end in tragedy. 

Mentally, city life up Fifth Avenue or down on 
Avenue A has its unfortunate effect upon children. 
The country is panorama, the city is bioscope. One 
gives "the sleep that is among the lonely hills," the 
other the rush and weariness of great crowds, and many 
jumbled experiences. The teacher who has taught 
both in the country and the city knows the difference. 
The one great struggle of city schools is to reproduce 
artificially some of the country conditions. 

These untoward circumstances in the bringing up of 
children many husbands and wives are more or less con- 
sciously facing to-day. The avoidance of parenthood 
is at least partly due to its difficulty in cities. The 
country life movement is a wholesome reaction that 
ought to rise to the dimensions of a crusade. Mr. 

63 



Betterment through the Home 

Graham Romeyn Taylor tells of a Rochester manufac- 
turer who, while walking about his workshop, noticed 
a new face. Upon inquiring, he found that the work- 
man had recently come up from the far South. 

"How did you happen to come all this distance?" 
asked the manufacturer. 

"Well," said the workman, "I thought of my three 
children. I wanted to give them all the advantages I 
could possibly afford. The schools in my small South- 
ern community were not as good as I wished. In some m 
way, I heard that the Rochester schools do so much for 
the children and young people. It meant a good deal 
of a sacrifice, for I left a foreman's job in Georgia to 
work at the bench here. But when I think of what it 
means for the future of my children, the sacrifice is for- 
gotten, and I am glad I came." 

Why should such an incident be exceptional ? Men 
have always been willing to travel far with their fami- 
lies in search of fortune. What better fortune is there 
than a home in a town where it is safe to bring up chil- 
dren? The city of Detroit, with its motto, "In De- 
troit Life is Worth Living," has recognized the prac- 
tical value of this appeal to workingmen in behalf of 
the better things of life for themselves and their chil- 
dren. 

City life is not all loss. Philanthropy and civic 
spirit have made some conquests. The cities have 
lowered their death-rate tremendously. They have 
usually better water, better sewage systems, better food 
than the country and the towns. They afford the great 
opportunities for human cooperation. "That," says 

64 



The Modern Home 



Dr. Luther H. Gulick, "is why the Bible says that 
heaven is a city." 

The situation is not hopeless. The home has sur- 
vived many vicissitudes, and its sanctity is not depen- 
dent upon incidentals. A home can be made in a hired 
house by a true mother. It can center about a gas-log 
as well as about a fireplace. Food may be prepared out- 
side, and drudgery done by servants, only to release the 
mother for her higher functions. Downtown can be 
left downtown by a father, and a strap-hanger can still 
keep a gentle heart and life. There are many things 
that can be done by parents who live in a city. They 
can imitate the country life in many ways. They can 
perhaps have outdoor sleeping porches. They can en- 
rich the home. Perhaps it can manage to have a play- 
room or a shop. Much may be made of Saturday after- 
noons and Sundays. It is conceivable that the school 
recreation center may form a social refuge for a whole 
family, and still assist and not pauperize the home. It 
is already doing so, for its significance educationally is 
that it seeks to restore as many of the wholesome primi- 
tive conditions as possible. There are the arts and 
crafts, the training in home-making, and dress-making, 
the scientifically planned calisthenics, the games, the 
neighborliness, the civic interest, the cooperation, and 
a refinement, a breadth, and a culture which the farm 
life never had. 

There are other ways. The author has felt that 
there is much opportunity in the summer family camp. 
He once knew a hamlet of seven abandoned farmhouses, 
any one of which could have been had almost for the 

65 



Betterment through the Home 

asking. Another family bought an abandoned school- 
house, and made it into a cottage. Down at Crescent 
Beach near Boston, the shore used to be lined with 
shacks made out of packing boxes. Along the inlets 
near the sea, one passes many tiny shelters of the same 
sort. A house boat or a house wagon may be eco- 
nomically contrived, and the Municipal Camp for boys, 
which was conducted for two seasons upon a Boston 
harbor island, foreshadows what might be if there were 
organized family tent-cities on city land. It is the 
inclination that is lacking and that we are losing in the 
city for country and outdoor living, and not the oppor- 
tunity that is wanting. The fresh-air work for chil- 
dren has relieved their tired mothers, and the summer 
rests have given the mothers ease, and charity has been 
freely offered and readily accepted for such work. 
Organized endeavor and assistance for family outings 
should be equally successful. 

This is not a treatise on home-making. The above 
are simply a few suggestions as to the changes of condi- 
tions to which we must adapt ourselves. Such a treatise 
would demand a study of the varied problems of homes 
all along the wide scale of American living and would 
invelve a wisdom which the ordinary father and student 
could not possess. One more suggestion, however, 
may be made which is fundamental, and which applies 
to every type of home. It is in regard to parenthood 
as a profession. If it be a profession, it ought to have 
its tools and its equipment. The tool of the parent is 
the house. How few houses, whether owned or hired, 
are built with any reference to children. The author 

66 



The Modern Home 



happens to live in a large community inhabited almost 
entirely by young parents, who have planned their own 
houses, and yet he recalls but one or two in which there 
is any room, except sleeping-rooms, which were appar- 
ently intended for children to live in. Herein archi- 
tects as well as parents are at fault. The play-room, the 
enclosed sun-room, the shop are more necessary to a 
house than the "living-room," which is generally a 
room adapted for adults, or the foolish "reception- 
room," or the seldom used "den." Even more 
important is it that every child should have a room 
of his own, for a haunt, a secret nook, a shrine, a place 
to regain and keep his individuality and poise and, at 
times, to exercise his little hospitalities. 

Parenthood as a profession must have equipment. 
The mental equipment for home-making is referred to 
in the chapter on Eugenics, but what is especially in 
mind is the coordination with the home of every helpful 
influence possible to strengthen the parents. Other 
professions have their specialists and advisers. The 
parent has his. There is the family physician. We 
are beginning to react a little in this country against 
the special medical or surgical man, as we appreciate 
the integrity of the body. The parent needs the family 
physician as counselor, who knows the constitutions 
of himself and his children, who has learned to read 
their development and maladies like a book, and who 
may be conferred with as to the relation of their morals 
to their health and the application of hygiene, nursing, 
and perhaps minor surgery to their moral needs. 
Then there is the teacher. Education is integral, and 

67 



Betterment through the Home 

the home and the school cannot afford to educate the 
same child in independence and ignorance of each other. 
Some things, named by Professor Walter S. Athearn, 
only the home life can determine: habits of industry; 
conception of God, duty, honor, honesty, etc.; emo- 
tional reactions, likes and dislikes; vocabulary, habits 
of speech, love of books and literary tastes; motor re- 
actions, posture, carriage, etc.; habits of cleanliness, 
neatness, etc.; habits of obedience, accuracy, prompt- 
ness; habits of study, depending upon the conversation 
and occupation of the home; standards of conduct and 
morals. Compared with these, how minor is the train- 
ing in language use, ability to figure, or vocation, offered 
by the school. And yet the school-teacher knows the 
child better than the parent does, the teacher has the 
skill and knowledge of the tools of learning which the 
parent does not possess, and the parent ought to be 
humble enough, and ready to ask all the help which 
the teacher will give. We already have the parent- 
teacher associations, visiting days, and mothers' clubs. 
We may soon have formally, what we already have in- 
formally, parental counselors in the schoolhouse as 
well as vocational counselors for our children. Then 
there is the church. The church cannot teach the child 
religion, though the home expects it. The church can 
teach ethics, and it can give some religious exercise, but 
it cannot give ideas of God, duty, honor, and honesty 
to the child, and neither church nor home can afford to 
do their complementary work with the same child apart 
from each other. More and more the churches are ask- 
ing for pastors and pastors' assistants who are specialists 



The Modern Home 



in religious education, more and more pastoral calling 
is becoming a conference on the religious nurture of 
the children, and more and more church and home are 
trying to work together. Is it not a question whether 
a church has a right to seek the conversion of a child 
apart from his home or away from his parents? Is 
there any vitality in child religion which has church 
origin but not home origin ? Can a child have a whole- 
some religious life which is not exercised chiefly in his 
home circle? 

The matter of punishments is one which a modern 
parent finds a difficulty. Our own forebears in an aus- 
tere age seemed to know how to bring upon us a sud- 
den and righteous retribution for our misdeeds that was 
as certain and as just as the visitations of Providence. 
But here is where we find it most hard to be God to a 
child. It is easy, as Ernest H. Abbott has said, to say 
to a child, "I spank you, because I love you," but it 
is not easy to spank him because you respect him. 
The only time when it is any pleasure to castigate a 
child is just when we ought not to do it, when we are 
angry, but is it feasible a number of hours later, when 
he comes running up with a smile, to wallop him with 
calm, passionless conscientiousness? How shall we 
differentiate "moral suasion" from "jawing?" Or if 
self-government be our hobby, what shall we do when 
the child refuses to obey himself? Surely, a father will 
not try to whip a son who is big enough to fight him! 
But how is he going to maintain his authority? These 
are some of the puzzling questions that arise. 

Answers have to be general ones. There is an early 
69 



Betterment through the Home 

period when, for safety, discipline, and wisdom, chil- 
dren should obey their parents. There is a time when 
a youth should learn to obey himself. And there is a 
time between. In the first period, parents need to be 
as chary of commands as possible, never giving any 
when the child is sick or tired, and putting unpleasant 
ones as much.in the form of encouragement, challenge, 
and cooperation as possible. Punishments, when neces- 
sary, can be of deprivation and reasonable (but not 
dark or frightful) solitude as well as of bodily pain. 
Spanking is a specific, not a cure-all, and is very satis- 
fying to some children. In the period of youth, the 
boy or girl needs to be forced to make most of his own 
decisions. Their cost and responsibility may be sug- 
gested, and they should be met by the youth himself. 
The wise parent will not give any commands that he 
and his child know he cannot enforce, and by this time 
his calm and affectionate warnings or wishes will be 
more effective. It is the period between childhood and 
maturity, where the problem of guidance and correc- 
tion becomes most acute. There can be no definite 
rules. The parent wishes to try to remember that the 
child is beginning to take command of his own life, 
and he wants him to do so, as fast as he can, without 
making shipwreck. But he naturally wants his self- 
education to be as inexpensive to himself and others 
as possible. Here is where, more than anywhere else, 
he prays for personal strength of character, which shall 
persuade even a hot-headed boy that his father is always 
just, frequently generous, and sometimes right. 

The chief peril of a child, as Professor Francis G. 
70 



The Modern Home 



Peabody has pointed out, "is not his bad companions, 
or his bad books, or his bad habits; it is homelessness. " 
This homelessness may consist in living in that sub- 
stratum of poverty in which no true home life is possi- 
ble, but it is quite as likely to consist, in families well- 
to-do, in a kind of "placing-out system," as Professor 
Peabody calls it, "the homelessness of the isolation of 
a boy's soul; the lack of any one to listen to him; the 
loss of roots to hold him to his place and make him 
grow. ' ' 

A good home has but few essentials. These are 
not riches, or culture, or leisure. The shelter must 
have some room and planning for the children. The 
virtues of the parents must be simplicity, consistency, 
and piety. They must take their calling seriously, 
preparing for it in advance, if so permitted, but if not, 
coordinating their wisdom and work with that of the 
physician, the teacher, and the minister. Then, to- 
gether, they must practice their sacred vocation, learn- 
ing sometimes their duty a day or an hour in advance, 
and sustained ever by their happiness in the com- 
panionship of their little ones, the wonder of their 
developing natures, and the consciousness that they are 
serving the republic as high privates, and the future as 
its noblest benefactors. 

REFERENCES 

i 'The Family, " by Helen Bosanquet. New York: The 
Macmillan Co., 1906. A sympathetic study of the evolu- 
tion of the family and its present function. 

"The Training of Parents, " by Ernest H. Abbott. Bos- 
71 



Betterment through the Home 

ton: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1905. A brilliant book on 
experiences with young children. 

4 'Garden Cities of To-morrow," by Ebenezer Howard. 
London: Swan, Sonnenschein and Co., Ltd., 1902. The 
literary source of the garden city movement. 

44 The Tenement House Problem," by Robert W. De 
Forest and Lawrence Veiller. New York: The Macmillan 
Co., 1903. 

The April, 1911, number of Religious Education, Chicago, 
contains eight valuable papers upon the modern home. 



X 

THE ART OF BEING A GODPARENT 

IN that idyll of early Christian symbolism known as 
infant baptism, a minor character comes into mo- 
mentary importance, speaks his part, and then re- 
tires into the shadow. He is called the godfather or 
sponsor. It was his place to assume for this infant 
prince of a spiritual kingdom his royal vows and crown 
rights. He stood also a substitute for the parents in 
case of incapacity or death — for the prospect of martyr- 
dom made doubly solemn if, indeed, it did not suggest 
the ceremonial — should render uncertain a religious 
education. The spiritual responsibility thus entered 
upon was for many centuries deemed more sacred, 
though not made so by law, than legal guardianship. 
The relation of sponsor in England was given the term 
"godship" or "gossip," which meant then God-kin- 
ship, though now it means something very different, 
and marriage was prohibited between godparents and 
the family of the baptized. Recently the institution 
has to many lost its early meaning. You have acted 
the part yourself, perhaps, and felt yourself well quit 
of the task when you had awkwardly supported a pair 
of self-conscious parents and their burden of squirming 
lace at the font, and left with them a fitting token for 
the child. The idea itself was so significant, however, 

73 



Betterment through the Home 

that it deserves to be rescued. We have come to an era 
which is beginning to recognize not only that the hope 
for humanity's future is in the cradle, but that indi- 
vidual values are such that all work for humanity must 
begin there. We see that a child is not a private per- 
son or possession. Around the parents of every young 
child in the temple of humanity stand representatives, 
not only of the church, but of law, philanthropy, and 
the state, inquiring who will stand sponsor for this 
babe, that it shall receive an adequate training for life, 
and shall be a help and not an injury to the race. 

We may make, then, a new definition of a godparent. 
A godparent is any person who endeavors to assist or 
supplement parents in the nurture of their children. 
The definition assumes that the home is the primary 
institution, and that no rightful work can be done re- 
gardless of, or in antagonism to it; but it also insists 
that many parents need assistance, and that all parents 
need supplementary agencies if their children are to 
become what they may be. 

Godparents are divided into several classes. There 
are those, first, who assume the care of children because 
of the failure of the home. Among these are officers 
of orphan asylums and industrial, reformatory, and 
farm schools, and, very largely in this division, the 
heads of private schools. In the second class come 
those whose work is not to take the place of, but to 
supplement the home, such as school teachers, boys' 
club leaders, settlement workers, play-masters, church 
workers, and individuals who help boys, not only in- 
stitutionally, but personally. Behind these, and yet 

74 






The Art of being a Godparent 

not to be obscured by them, are the disciples of child 
study, who in the laboratory rather than in the work- 
shop are studying the nature and needs of boy and girl 
life. 

Among the modern close subdivisions of human 
labor, we are none too early in recognizing that of the 
godparent. It is already a profession demanding special 
preparation, offering definite openings and some meas- 
ure, as yet meager, of financial reward. It is also a 
calling, engaging more and more the time, money, and 
ardent interest of many volunteers, whose daily round 
of business in other employments is becoming an avo- 
cation as the peculiar interest and unique importance 
of this are made manifest. God gives the mother-heart 
and the father-heart to those to whom He does not 
give children. This may, as we accept the fate, make 
tragedy or idyll. 

The social importance of the work in which we are 
engaged consists in the fact that it is done in the years 
when the social instinct is in a formative and plastic 
state. The child of the ages with which we deal feels 
so strongly the pressure to seek the wider circles of life 
that these may be called the anti-domestic years. Not 
even the wisest and most perfect home can satisfy the 
nature that now stirs with unbounded interests and 
curiosities. It is well that this is so, for otherwise the 
child would never become a world-citizen or know a 
wholesome social consciousness. The social feeling 
manifests itself in several distinct ways: in the grow- 
ing spirit of team-work and fairness in out-door games; 
in the gang spirit in groups of boys and girls; in new 

75 



Betterment through the Home 

and passionate friendships with chums or adult heroes; 
and later, in an increasing interest in the other sex. 
Each of these manifestations has its happy prophecies 
and its dangerous auguries. The baseball or football 
teams and contests are a microcosm of the social order, 
and are a finer expression of play than the squabblings 
and unorganized games of little boys, yet unregulated 
they may take on all the unfavorable features of profes- 
sional sport. The most important thing that ever hap- 
pens to any child is its first friendships, but its influence 
depends entirely on the character of that friend. The 
king of Boyville may be an immature Shaftesbury or 
an embryo Jesse James. The education furnished by 
the "gang" is extremely effective, but the social and 
moral perils of the unregulated gang, which is, after 
all, only a modified savage clan, are understood by all. 
The love of woman may be an ennobling influence, 
but sexual precocity is a moral menace. 

Here is where we find our social opportunity. The 
child reaching up to older companionship may find 
his ideal and friend in the adult who has given himself 
to his redemption. The clubs and athletic groups 
which we form become to many a lad his first entrance 
into social fellowship, and that a wholesome one. Our 
groups of young people are molded into artificial gangs, 
self-directing, but guided by us. Our work with young 
children by themselves postpones the interest in the 
other sex, and gives the opportunity to prepare to make 
such intercourse, when it comes, sensible and uplifting. 
More than all, through all these companionships, we 
are helping the child to decide whether his relation to 

76 



The Art of Being a Godparent 

his race shall be to lift or to lean, to bless or to curse. 
Dr. Gladden has remarked that the most important 
thing a young man has to decide is whether he will 
pay one hundred cents on a dollar; that is, whether he 
will acknowledge and honor his obligation to society. 
It is now, as Mr. Joseph Lee suggests, that the lad 
may develop from Sir Launcelot, the knight of single 
combat, into Arthur, the loyal king, and the question 
is to be decided whether he will remain for life what a 
boy is, a bandit, or become a true man; that is, a citi- 
zen and a social servant. 

There is something the matter socially with an insti- 
tution where a child is allowed to think that the pay- 
ment of either five cents a month or ten dollars a year 
entitles him to run the institution, or to regard it as 
solely an instrument of his own pleasure. The peda- 
gogy of social service is yet in its infancy, but there is 
no more satisfactory social test of a work with young 
people than that it has led some of them to a generous 
life mission. Here, perhaps, we lay our hands more 
potently than we know upon the social future of the 
republic, when without touching laws or institutions, 
we teach the children of the state that private citizen- 
ship, as much as public office, is a public trust. 

The godfather is thus a moral force. Whatever 
else we are doing, our chief end is suggested in the 
resolution placed in the Creator's mouth after the story 
of the making and fitting up of the earth in the first of 
Genesis, "Let us make man." 

Two foes the genuine worker with children has to 
meet. One is the corrupter of morals, who finds in the 
7 77 



Betterment through the Home 

easily seduced friendliness of lads his open opportu- 
nity. The other is the amateur in philanthropy, who, 
with his hypnotic good-fellowship and the lively use 
of some popular method, takes a one-season interest in 
a group, and then carelessly throws away the priceless 
opportunities of their awakened affection and confi- 
dence. He is a winsome, but mischievous Pied Piper, 
who fiddles young lives into his train, and then leads 
them no whither. 

The secret of the origin of moral principle is hard 
finding out. A child often seems to accumulate it, just 
as he does mud on his shoes, by its sticking on as he 
goes. But there are at least two recognizable ways in 
which influence may be exerted. The anthropologist 
explains most of the moral aberrations of childhood as 
the emergence or persistence of savage instincts. If 
these can be prevented from functioning, they wither 
and disappear. They are so prevented by filling the 
life full of the opposite tendencies. It is the filled, and 
not the empty life that is morally safe. The young 
person who has learned what making things costs is not 
so likely to destroy other people's property. The 
child who can be made enthusiastic in doing something 
is never going to have time nor desire to be obstreper- 
ous. The girl who has been stirred to live for some 
large purpose is not so subject to the temptations of 
impurity or pleasure. The other influence is the per- 
sonal one. Many people are willing to give everything 
to children — their own or other people's — except the 
priceless gift, themselves. They offer their personal- 
ity to others much as that curious South American liz- 

78 



The Art of Being a Godparent 

ard, who, when pursued, shakes his tail off, and leaves 
it in the path as a bait, while it flees itself to shelter. 
It is not easy to do. Plato said, "Many are the wand- 
bearers, but few are the true bacchanals. ' ' And if there 
is anything that a child of sixteen, who is just beginning 
to find himself, who is struggling alternately with his 
own boundless conceit and his exhaustless ignorance, 
and who is sure he is in love, needs, it is a friend. 

The keynote to this work is reality. A child has 
a horror of moralizing, "personal work," and good 
advice. He does not like to be wept over by a 
woman, or caressed or prayed over by a man. His 
ideals, because of his splendid physical vigor and 
rapid growth, are largely physical ideals. "Nipper 
Brown is the best scholar in my class," confesses the 
author of "The Real Diary of a Real Boy," but adds, 
with simple pride, "I can lick him with one hand." 
Life to a boy is, as it is not to us, real all the time. 

Unto such a person it is no use to come with finger 
on lip or frown on face, or even with a rosy apple 
hitched to a prayer-meeting — if you would find him 
at home. We must have religion to bring these chil- 
dren that is as real as themselves, and that will live 
among their childish instincts. 

Reality is the only thing worth working with or for, 
in trying to help children. A child may be able, as a 
recent writer expressed it, "to disgorge Bible verses 
like buckshot out of a bag," or willing to turn his soul 
inside out in a prayer-meeting like a turkey's gizzard, 
but if he is not honest and clean in his living, he has 
simply become a white-washed sepulcher. Methods, 

79 



Betterment through the Home 

too, must have real ends in view, and appeal to real in- 
stincts. The supreme excellence of volunteer social 
work with boys is that, as nowhere else, not even in 
the home and in the school, one may make a constant 
and unadulterated appeal to enthusiasm. As this is 
something every normal boy is ready to furnish in 
quantities, you have only to engage it wholesomely to 
get hold of the whole boy. To win such results re- 
quires real men. Sponge-cake kind of men, middle- 
aged people who think because they are pronounced 
they are omniscient, people who confound biliousness 
and religion, professional students of childhood who 
lack a sense of humor, will never do as teachers for 
boys. Our Sunday schools need more bugles and less 
fog horns. And sometimes a motherly creature who 
knows the gospel of caraway cookies, and whose attic is 
as open to boys as her heart, becomes a beautiful Phoebe 
who succoreth many. A man who, in working with 
boys, ever makes failures, without asking how he him- 
self was to blame, is almost certainly pulling at the 
wrong door-bell. Self-control and a good temper are 
not only traits worth having, but they are indispensable 
to the minister to boys. 

One hesitates to name the methods of reality, be- 
cause so many people will pounce upon a method in- 
stead of its spirit, and study a plan, instead of studying 
boys. The new way of helping boys does not consist, 
as some suppose, in lionizing bad boys, in patented ap- 
pliances or in converting a church into a play-room, 
but in appealing to a boy's real instincts, and in trying 
to get him to enjoy his virtues more than he does his 

80 



The Art of Being a Godparent 

vices. The author's experience is that it doesn't make 
much difference which method is used. The essential 
thing is to have hold of one boy by as many handles as 
possible. Almost no method pans out well as a method 
as the leader anticipates, and no method is good for 
more than two years in succession, yet every method is 
a success that can be used for a time as an adequate ex- 
pression of friendliness. 

A boy who was once asked what he considered the 
essential qualities of a church boys' club responded 
sententiously, "Fun and Feed." Perhaps there may 
be other elements, but there is no doubt that the play 
spirit, exercised on the physical level, is the natural 
point of departure. The playing, of course, may be 
directed by adults unto its higher educational possibili- 
ties. Here naturalness must be the guide. There 
has been a tendency lately, particularly in the settle- 
ments, to give elaborate dramatic representations, in 
close imitation of what is being done in our colleges. 
Many have "pointed with pride" to the literary taste 
and dramatic ability thus shown among the children of 
the poor. This is all a mistake. The effects and the 
motives are both theatric. The play of children, it is 
true, is dramatic. Their first organized step beyond 
mere games should be the doing of simple charades and 
the endeavor to act out the characters which they know. 
As soon as memorizing, elaborate drill and footlights 
enter, we nourish the theatrical, the children become 
self-conscious and get "stage-struck." All these are 
prevented when we make the dramatic work the natural 
evolution of their play. 

81 



Betterment through the Home 

In all these clubs there must be spontaneity on the 
part of the child, motive on the part of the leader. 
Most godparents never get anywhere, because they 
have not started to go anywhere. Even the play may 
have its meaning and purpose, and nothing can be more 
disheartening socially than to enter an organization, 
even for street boys, that has been running for ten years 
and find in it nothing but play-rooms. Play must re- 
main and must always have its place, but the club is, in 
its ideal and work, at best a school. 

The finest thing a club can develop is the spirit of 
doing for others. Nothing is worse for boys than to 
be coddled. The club in which membership is 
thought anything less than a privilege is not worth 
sustaining. A good club is one in which the older 
boys look after the moral and social welfare of the 
younger, in which they remain after club hours, not as 
objects of discipline, but to confer with their comrades, 
the godparents, as to what they can best do to help 
others. 

One thing that impresses the writer more and more 
is that a week with boys or girls in camp in summer is 
worth more than a whole winter indoors. There is 
something about the return to nature, the sharing of 
hardships, the instant exposure to scorn of the molly- 
coddle, the loafer, or the "squealer/' the sweet influ- 
ences of the Pleiades, and the glamor of the camp-fire, 
such incidents as the visit of a baby, and the Sunday 
service on the shore, which creates in a brief time fel- 
lowships whose only analogies are those of college days. 

It is a beautiful sight to watch young people coming 

82 



The Art of Being a Godparent 

along like this, living amid a thousand distractions un- 
commonly simple and wholesome lives, with clean 
speech and clean habits, and a quiet good-will toward 
manhood. They have their limitations. Their char- 
acters are subjective so far, and to a degree selfish 
rather than outreaching. They fall down under re- 
sponsibility. But this thing is true — 'the esprit de corps 
of this group stands for a higher ethics than that of 
most of its individual members, which is exactly the 
opposite from the case with most unsupervised gangs: 

But let us not say nor think the word "club" every 
time we talk about helping boys and girls. A club is 
a convenient way to deal with a group, and it utilizes 
the group-spirit, but there is important and effective 
good to be done by those who have not the knack of 
clubs. There is the man who is willing to be "Big 
Brother" to the gamin on probation; the woman who 
will be a personal friend to the young girl whose peril 
the Y. W. C. A. has discovered. Here is the mother 
who adopts into her brood, for play hours, the child who 
is neglected at home; and there is the man who can win 
the confidence of working boys until they seek him 
whenever they need counsel. 

What a misfortune it is becoming to be a good 
boy! Miss Winifred Black was talking about this the 
other day. "Ten or fifteen years ago," she was say- 
ing, "when a boy broke a window, we called him a bad 
boy, and let the police deal with him. Now when a 
boy does these things, we call him a 'delinquent,' and 
we pet him and buy him new clothes and theater tick- 
ets, and keep him out of jail as long as the outraged 

83 



Betterment through the Home 

community will allow us to do so. Does it pay to de- 
vote so much attention, trying to make bad boys good 
boys, that we have no time to devote to keeping the 
good boys decent?" There is a good deal in this. A 
well-to-do gentleman almost wept as he left Mr. Peix- 
otto's club for street boys one evening because, as he 
said, money couldn't buy for his son what the slum 
boys were getting in the Columbia Park Boys' Club. 

There is the greatest possible need for godparents. 
Supplementing and steadying all philanthropies, man- 
ning institutions, and enlisting in the force of volun- 
teer workers, unobtrusively serving as privates in the 
army of the common good, people who are willing 
patiently and personally to befriend boys and girls are, 
next to good parents, the most urgently needed factor 
in their betterment. 

REFERENCES 

Books that suggest the spirit proper to the godparent are 
these: 

' ■ Twenty Years at Hull House, ' ' by Jane Addams. New 
York: The Macmillan Co., 1910. 

' ' The Good Neighbor, ' ' by Mary E. Richmond. Phila- 
delphia: The J. B. Lippincott Co., 1908. 



BOOK TWO 
A BETTER START 

XI 

EUGENICS 

THE Science of the Well Born is the newest of the 
sciences. Nourished in the visions of students 
and philanthropists, it has so far received hardly 
more than its christening. Yet what program could 
be both more worthy and more ambitious than that 
which would give to every child, yet unborn, the right- 
ful heritages of health, intellectual opportunity and 
possible efficiency and happiness? 

Eugenics has to do with the instruction of future 
fathers and mothers in the laws of parenthood, in the 
purity of sex relations, and the consequent abolition of 
the transmissible diseases produced by sexual vice, in 
the prohibition of marriage and marriage relations be- 
tween the unfit, and in the encouragement of those 
who are most fit for parenthood to seek its opportuni- 
ties and duties. In short, it desires that better people 
shall become better parents of better children. It would 
renew the world by the propagation of itsstrongest and 
best stocks. 

Eugenics boldly states that these are matters that 
can no longer be held to be of purely private concern. 

85 



A Better Start 



Says Dr. JohnF. Bobbitt: "Families of the better class 
are smaller than formerly. College graduates of to-day 
average considerably less than two children per man, 
whereas, in the laboring population, the average is 
twice as great. The more highly endowed classes 
furnish a far smaller proportion of the parentage than 
is furnished by the stupid, unambitious, poorly en- 
dowed strata at the bottom. Ability is dying out at 
the top, simply because it is not being born. . . . 
On the other hand, many influences are at work to 
protect the weaker and poorer social stocks, and to 
enable them to have larger families than in the past 
ages. Our medicine, hygiene and public sanitation 
keep alive multitudes of weaklings that formerly were 
weeded out by hard conditions. Thus, to-day we 
save weak lungs, weak muscles, weak eyes and ears, 
weak minds and weak wills, weakness in general, and 
weakness in every particular, further corrupting the 
next generation. . . . This cutting off at the top of 
the best and the adding in at the bottom of the worst 
and poorest is at present exhausting the high qualities 
of our race with a rapidity never before equaled in the 
history of the world." 

Davenport calls attention to the fact that if only 
one-half of one per cent, of the one hundred million 
dollars we spend annually in America in hospitals, in- 
sane asylums, almshouses and institutions for the 
feebleminded "were spent on the study of the bad 
germ plasm that makes necessary the expenditure, we 
might learn just how it is reproduced and the best way 
to diminish its further spread." 

86 



Eugenics 

Regarding Eugenics as a public concern, Professor 
Irving Fisher says: "It should be recognized that a 
mother is a public functionary. She is the instrument 
for the pre-natal nurture of the next generation." 
Eugenics has, therefore, given its first care to the 
training of future mothers. Herbert Spencer fifty 
years ago said that if future antiquaries should exam- 
ine our school papers they would decide that ours 
was not a curriculum for anybody but celibates. Eu- 
genics commends direct instruction in mother-work, 
such as has been given in l'Ecole des Meres in Bor- 
deaux since 1897, and in the Association of House- 
keeping Centers of New York City more recently, and 
such as has been proposed in "Infant Science Acad- 
emies" in various cities in this country. It advocates 
the direct approach to the matter with all girls by the 
education of each in the care of her own body, mind 
and soul, to become fit in all three ways for her share 
in the production of healthy, intelligent and good 
children. We have so far only begun the effort in 
this direction, and have even scarcely learned the wisest 
methods by which to bring about the desired result. 
In the courses in biology and domestic science in the 
high schools there are some beginnings in this direc- 
tion. The study of evolution in biology forms a nat- 
ural and proper introduction to the physical facts of 
parenthood, while domestic science, broadened to in- 
clude boys as well as girls, involves the science of the 
home and the care of little children. Work of this 
sort is admirably done, especially in some of our state 
agricultural colleges and a few colleges and finishing 

87 



A Better Start 



schools for girls. The great majority of the young 
people who most need this information, however, leave 
school in the fifth and sixth grades, and there seems to 
be no possibility of any instruction which shall reach 
the entire youthful population, unless it is brought 
into these elementary years when perhaps the children 
are scarcely ready to appreciate or assimilate it. There 
is some hopefulness, however, in teaching experiments 
in the grades as well as in work of this sort which is 
being done in some night schools and in special classes 
organized by women's clubs. 

It will be worth while to learn what is being done 
in one institution which has organized a distinct 
"home makers' school." I quote from the President 
of Stout Institute, Menominee, Wis. : "Its special pur- 
pose is to instruct and to train young women in those 
things which a woman needs to know and do in the 
discharge of her responsibilities as a homemaker. The 
course of study has been worked out on the principle 
suggested in this paper applied to each prominent line 
of activity which concerns the woman in the home. A 
single illustration will suffice to show the application 
of this method. The woman is responsible in the 
main for the selection, purchase, and care of food stuff. 
She is also responsible for the preparation of the food 
from these materials, and for serving it. A careful 
consideration was made of the requisite knowledge of 
necessary food elements for the proper nutrition of 
persons of different ages, from infancy to old age, and 
under different conditions of living and employment. 
This was followed by the determination of the differ- 



Eugenics 

ent food materials available which contained these 
requisite tood elements, and of the most economic 
mode of combining these materials into food prepara- 
tions so as to give the necessary food elements in 
proper proportion for any given meal. This was con- 
tinued by a determination of the knowledge requisite 
for a wise selection of food materials in the market 
with due reference to quality and cost. Then came a 
consideration of what must be known and done in 
order to properly prepare the food in a palatable form 
from the selected food materials, and what also was 
necessary for the proper serving of the food. As will 
be seen, this inquiry covered the entire range and 
resulted in the formulation of what must be known 
and done for the proper feeding of the members of the 
family with due reference to age, occupation, and 
condition of health. The material thus formulated 
constituted the course of study in this particular sub- 
ject. In a similar manner the other subjects were 
dealt with. 

"A consideration of the subject, the proper hous- 
ing of the family, involved the determination of proper 
arrangement and size of rooms, furnishings and deco- 
rations, the heating, lighting, ventilating, and drain- 
age, and of what is proper in the care of rooms, fur- 
nishings, and equipment in use. 

"An organization of the subject, the clothing of 
the family, for purposes of instruction involved a con- 
sideration of the knowledge requisite for the proper 
selection of clothing materials with reference to adapta- 
tion to needs, to wearing quality, cost, as related to 

89 



A Better Start 



income, and artistic effects, and of the knowledge and 
skill necessary for the making and keeping in repair 
the various garments to be provided in the home. 
The proper care of clothing not in use was also con- 
sidered. 

"In the same way, there was worked out a course 
of study dealing, with the care and nursing of children 
and other members of the family in case of illness; 
and of the immediate treatment necessary in case of 
accidents. 

"A course in child study from the standpoint of 
the mother and her responsibility to the child is being 
worked out in the same way* dealing not only with the 
physical, but with the spiritual well being of the child, 
and what is essential for each. Accompanying this is 
a course in children's literature based on children's 
aptitudes and interests. 

"Another special course is in process of organiza- 
tion involving a consideration of the economic, social, 
civic, and ethical relations of the woman to the fam- 
ily, to society, and to the state. 

"As will be seen, these various courses involve a 
study of the necessary scientific principles underlying 
the proper activities of the woman in the home and 
their application; a study of conditions, materials and 
processes as well as a study of the mind and its 
operations; and through the entire work, daily prac- 
tice and training in applying this special knowledge, 
for securing facility in doing the things that need to 
be done in the home. These are the special lines of 
work for this school. In addition to them there are 

90 



Eugenics 

some lines of study and training for general culture. 
It will be seen that the scope and purpose of this 
school is not realized through the teaching of a little 
cooking and sewing, such as is now being taught in 
some public schools, but that it goes much farther, 
covering a much wider field. It is believed that this 
school serves a purpose which the public schools, and 
even the colleges and universities, do not now serve, 
and that it will in time demonstrate the value of this 
kind of training, and the extent to which it may be 
given through well-organized school activities." 

Eugenics also advocates the scarcely less definite 
help of cooking classes, kitchen gardens and classes in 
nursing. It advocates the multiplication of home- 
making courses in women's colleges, and such a change 
of emphasis as shall place home life before women stu- 
dents as being as noble and possible a profession as is 
self-support and independence. It would have as a 
goal that no girl should lose her virtue through ignor- 
ance and weakness, that none should enter the mar- 
riage state without definite preparation, and that ideals 
of purity, parenthood, and public service through the 
bringing to birth and maturity of sound, well-nurtured 
children, should be generally exalted. 

A similar program is sought for with boys. They 
too are to be informed of the nature, purpose, and 
control of the sex functions before they mature, and of 
the peril of their abuse. They are especially to be 
instructed as to the terrible and lifelong effects of the 
two diseases which follow illicit relations, upon them- 
selves and their future wives and children, and to be 

91 



A Better Start 



given some conception of the ravages these diseases 
are making in society. But we are coming to see that 
while knowledge and fear are deterrents, "sex hy- 
giene," as Dr. G. Stanley Hall has told us, "is, two- 
fold, of the body and of the mind," and the lad who 
is going out into a masculine world which still holds 
the savage conviction that woman is a legitimate ob- 
ject of chase, must chiefly be educated through his 
idealisms, for the fiction of the day, the drama and the 
conversations of his companions all tend to encourage 
him to believe in and to practice five dangerous and 
absolutely false doctrines: "(1) That the purpose of 
the sex function is sensual pleasure; (2) That one has 
a natural right to indulge his sensual impulse as he 
pleases; (3) That such indulgence is a physical neces- 
sity, essential to the preservation of virility; (4) That 
chastity is not possible under the conditions in which 
the majority of young men live; (5) That his need is 
recognized in the setting apart of a certain class of 
women as instruments of sensual pleasure." He must 
have a self-respect, a noblesse oblige, which lifts him 
above the brutes. He must retain a chivalry which 
shall hold all womanhood in veneration. He must 
even have a positive knightliness which shall make 
him her aggressive protector. Perhaps he may be 
influenced to rise to the height of thinking of himself 
as crowned with the dignity of being the medium of 
transmission of the race and its future. In boyhood 
especially, the home atmosphere, hygienic habits, a 
clean social life, plenty of occupation, and perhaps 
organization with other boys in societies of chivalric 

92 



Eugenics 

ideals, will be important supplemental influences. 
The White Cross Society and the Knights of King 
Arthur are organizations that are actually undertaking 
to do this. The Society of Sanitary and Moral 
Prophylaxis in New York, and other organizations for 
instruction in sex hygiene, are actively doing educa- 
tive work, and they especially deserve confidence be- 
cause they contain a considerable number of respectable 
physicians, thus removing their influence out of the 
realms both of quackery and of emotionalism. Men- 
tion is made in the chapter on "Moral Training" of 
work that has been done in this direction in schools; 
in the chapter on "Sunday Schools," of what has been 
done in the church schools; and in the chapter on 
"Christian Associations" of the work they are doing. 

The protection of woman, the future mother, has 
engaged attention recently in many directions. Laws 
have been passed and international arrangements 
made to prevent the white slave traffic from one coun- 
try to another. There are societies which meet and 
warn and protect the young female immigrant, and 
Travelers' Aid Societies and womens' hotels in all large 
cities, to guard women traveling alone. The Society 
for the Suppression of Vice destroys tons of immoral 
literature and appliances, and chases the makers and 
dealers to their hiding-places. There is a movement 
now to watch city employment agencies, 75 per cent, 
of which have been found willing to send women to 
disorderly houses. The child labor movement has 
motherhood directly in mind, both in securing laws 
that shall protect prospective mothers from work, and 
8 93 



A Better Start 



in defending girls from toil under conditions as to 
surroundings or salary that tempt to immoral living. 
Laws have been formulated both in England and 
America to prevent the toil of mothers who have just 
given birth to children and endowing them financially, 
when necessary, with funds to enable them to rest and 
be cared for. 

The subject of prostitution need not be discussed 
at length here. One or two facts seem to be settled. 
"The majority of girls," as Judge Mack says, "do 
not start in wrong courses from love of lust, but from 
love of joy." Ignorance, hardships, reaction from 
miserable surroundings, desire for pretty clothes, and 
the gladness that belongs to youth, are the causes that 
lead girls astray, but the powers that impel them are 
the greed and the lust of men. The degradation of 
womanhood is a business as well as a vice. The fact 
that a girl can make a living by her vices, while 
a boy cannot by his, is an important fact in social 
degeneration. The fact that 45 per cent, of the girls 
who appear before the juvenile court come back, as 
against 20 per cent, of the boys, and that it costs 
three times as much to give girls reformatory and 
placing-out care as boys is because it is hard to pro- 
tect womanhood from man, the hunter for lust or 
greed. Social conditions which are delaying marriage, 
and which increase the number of nomad and home- 
less men, are increasing the sexual stress among men 
and inclining them toward illicit habits. The aboli- 
tion of prostitution, that most ancient and deeply 
seated of human diseases, is no holiday matter. The 

94 



Eugenics 

only light we have is that it must be done chiefly- 
through the education of men. This definitely was the 
conclusion of the Chicago Commission on Vice, which 
studied the problem more directly and thoroughly 
than has been done before in this country. There 
must be a general campaign to train boys in right 
ideals and habits, thus reversing the moral atmosphere 
of future masculine thought. The great work of mak- 
ing marriage and home-making simpler and feasible 
earlier must be undertaken. The traffic in women 
must be outlawed and made more dangerous and 
unprofitable. The relation of vice to the nation's 
health will be realized so deeply that the male prosti- 
tute will stand before the law as the female, and mar- 
riage of men infected with loathsome diseases will be 
prevented through compulsory examination. Com- 
pulsory report by physicians and control by boards of 
health of syphilis and gonococcus infection must come 
if we are ever to control the Black Plague, as we 
already hope to the White Plague. 

There are further proposals toward cleansing the 
springs of life. The asexualizing of the feeble-minded 
and of habitual criminals, especially of those guilty of 
sexual sins, will probably be legitimized generally, as 
it is already in a few states. Science will give further 
suggestions as to the possibility of magnifying the 
good and minimizing the evil heritages. 

These are the chief problems of eugenics, but their 
difficulty is that "each seeks a way to reverse nature." 
This is especially true of the endeavor to encourage 
those who are "at the top of society, to forego their 

95 



A Better Start 



ambitions, their pleasures, their love of ease, and 
seriously and consistently for long generations to 
undertake the parentage and nurture of more numer- 
ous bearers of their heredity. " For a number of 
decades the birth rate has fallen off one per cent, every 
decade. Economic ease, while it may encourage mar- 
riage, does just the opposite of this especial thing that 
is desired. "This is not," says Dawson, "a generation 
that idealizes fatherhood and motherhood." It may 
be that agitation will arouse better men to the gravity 
of the situation. Mr. Roosevelt's reiterated homilies 
are wholesome. Are they effective in reawakening 
atrophied parental desires? Galton proposes an 
eugenic religion, which shall look not merely to per- 
sonal salvation, but also to the ultimate good of all 
future human kind. But religion is much a matter of 
feeling, and this is a realm in which intellect and self- 
interest control. Will Eugenics be able so to present 
its truths as to influence the feelings, the religion, and 
the conduct of men, in the solution of this gravest of 
problems? 

REFERENCES 

"Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eu- 
genics,' ' by C. W. Saleeby. New York: Moffat, Yard and 
Co., 1909. 

"Eugenics," by Charles B. Davenport. New York: 
Henry Holt, 1911. 

"The Social Direction of Human Evolution," by Will- 
iam E. Kellicott. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1911. 

Dr. John F. Bobbitt in an article entitled "Practical 
96 



Eugenics 



Eugenics, ' ' in the Pedagogical Seminary for September, 1909, 
has enlarged upon the main theses of this chapter. Chap- 
ter XVII in Dr. G. Stanley Hall's "Adolescence," on 
"Adolescent Girls and their Education," is a famous dis- 
quisition on the womanly and maternal needs in educa- 
tion. The best books of guidance and inspiration regard- 
ing the purpose and control of the sex functions are two 
little ones by E. B. Lowry, M.D., the one for boys entitled 
"Truths, " and the one for girls, "Confidences, " both pub- 
lished by Forbes and Co., Boston, 1911. 



XII 

HEALTH 

THE American Constitution states it as self-evi- 
dent that every person has a right to live, yet 
the facts regarding the mortality of young chil- 
dren indicate that society has not yet learned how to 
protect its young even in securing a foothold on the 
threshold of a human career. At least one-fifth of the 
children born in America die before they are one year 
old, and one-third fail to reach a third of the proper 
expectancy for human existence. Such a destruction 
of society's capital in its helpless innocence is appall- 
ing. As Dr. Earl Mayo says, "This is heavy cam- 
paigning. The loss in numbers of the infantile army 
in its first twelve months is greater than has been sus- 
tained by any actual army in active warfare in any 
armed conflict of modern times." "Such mortality, " 
says Dr. Lorenzo D. Harvey, "among the domestic 
animals bred for profit or use would immediately call 
for congressional and legislative commissions to inves- 
tigate the causes and to propose means for the remedy. " 
He goes on to quote a medical authority in reference 
to the absolute helplessness and dependence of the 
infant upon adults for every facility for life and health: 
"Unable to stand, much less to wander in search of 
food; very nearly deaf; all but blind; well-nigh indis- 

98 



Health 

criminating as to the nature of what is presented to its 
mouth; utterly unable to keep itself clean, yet highly 
susceptible to the effects of dirt; able to indicate its 
needs only by alternately turning its head, open- 
mouthed, from side to side, and then crying; possessed 
of an almost ludicrously hypersensitive interior; una- 
ble to fast for more than two or three hours, yet having 
the most precise and complicated dietetic requirement; 
needing the most carefully maintained warmth; easily 
injured by draughts; the prey of bacteria (which take 
up a permanent abode in the alimentary canal by the 
eleventh day) — where is to be found a more complete 
picture of helpless dependence?" 

The first step in the campaign for child-saving is 
that of eugenics, which was dealt with in the last chap- 
ter. Children must first be born and then be saved. 
If they be well born, the problem of their salvation is 
simple. But eugenics is a new science. Few are 
familiar with it and most mothers have to learn all 
that they ever learn about mother-work after they 
enter the condition. 

What the girl misses may perhaps be given to her 
after she becomes a woman. The work of visiting 
nurses in homes, of attendants at milk depots, and of 
those in charge of summer philanthropies for mothers, 
in instructing mothers practically regarding the care 
of young children, has been most encouraging in its 
results in saving life. Allen states that in a certain 
limited region in New York City, where mothers were 
systematically taught, the mortality of babies decreased 
2 5 per cent, during that year. 

99 



A Better Start 



It is generally acknowledged that hygiene is the 
most important, ought to be the most interesting, but 
is actually the most dreaded and useless study in the 
school curriculum. This paradoxical condition is 
partly due to the fact that the subject has been used 
so largely as a deterrent from the future use of alcohol 
and tobacco, partly to the indifference — for this and 
other reasons — of school teachers, and partly to the 
imperfect character of the text-books which have been 
used. A subject which is so personal as hygiene 
ought to appeal to the self-consciousness of the selfish 
years of childhood, while the opportunity for making 
it an inspiration, both for study and for application, 
is unexcelled. We are at once in need of text-books 
which shall by laboratory methods reveal to children 
what they need to know about the value of sunlight 
and sleep, the choice of food, the danger of patent 
medicines, the wholesomeness of outdoor life, the 
sources of " colds," and the opportunity of outgrow- 
ing feebleness, setting right slight abnormalities, and 
attaining a vigorous and even athletic physical condi- 
tion. Here is the one subject in which the laboratory 
is the child himself, and the inspiration for experi- 
ments is the immediate and happy results which he 
can attain in a buoyant physical condition. Hygiene 
thus considered is more than a text-book. It becomes 
a part of the school discipline and exercise. In order 
to have any practical meaning, personal hygiene as 
taught in the school must be supported by a real 
hygiene practiced in the school. There is no use to 
teach methods of securing health in a dark and unven- 

100 



Health 

tilated school-room, in which the foul dust of the day 
before is stirred up by brooms and dusters just before 
school opens in the morning. Example is so much 
more powerful than precept that the health of teachers 
is an essential part of the teaching method in hygiene. 
It has even been suggested that teachers be examined 
periodically, both as to their own personal habits and 
as to their physical condition, their reelection to de- 
pend upon their satisfying both these tests. 

The next step in the conservation of the health of 
the young is the scientific examination of school chil- 
dren. Modern authorities advocate that all children 
be thus examined during every year of the school 
course. The central principle which underlies such 
examinations is the fact that the health of children is 
the index to the health of the community. Here con- 
tagious diseases may be discovered in their incipiency. 
Here outbreaks of typhoid and other filth diseases 
may be anticipated and prevented, and the physical 
condition of children from different parts of a city 
gives an immediate means of guidance to the activities 
of the Boards of Health. More directly, these exami- 
nations are valuable as the only accurate means of 
guiding the parent, the teacher and the community in 
conserving the health of the children. Even the most 
watchful parent should be grateful for the discovery of 
the presence of violent contagious diseases in a com- 
munity, in time to protect his own child. Few parents 
are yet educated enough to recognize the presence of 
adenoids, eye strain and malformations, and the num- 
ber of parents who fail to realize the importance of 

101 



A Better Start 



healthy teeth and of dental sanitation is extraordinary. 
But the purpose of such inspection is not merely to 
protect the child and the community, but also to put 
him in proper condition for study and the absorption 
of knowledge. 

Some of the results of medical examinations in the 
schools are as follows: First, as has been indicated, 
the presence of contagious diseases, is anticipated. A 
scourge of scarlet fever or of diphtheria is often warded 
off, as the result of information gathered in the school- 
room. Trachoma, that most dangerous of eye dis- 
eases, may be segregated and almost abolished through 
the care of school officials and nurses. It is even 
hoped that the annual spring invasion of measles and 
the other so-called "mild" diseases, which neverthe- 
less have a considerable mortality and leave dangerous 
after-effects, may be ultimately prevented. 

The effectiveness of such work is hardly appre- 
ciated by the public. Mangold instances 9,000 per- 
sons who had been exposed to diphtheria who were 
treated to immunizing doses of antitoxin, as the result 
of timely warning. Of these persons only 51 after- 
ward contracted the disease, and all of them recovered. 
The steps which are taken in such a disease are as fol- 
lows: First, the establishment of strict quarantine and 
the special medical inspection of schools in which in- 
cipient cases have been discovered. Second, a bac- 
teriological diagnosis of the case, as a precaution. 
Third, the extensive use of antitoxin. Fourth, the 
tracing of the contagion to its source and ascertaining 
its communicating medium. 

102 



Health 

It is claimed that at least 70 per cent, of the 
children who enter school are not physically prepared 
to do so. Some of their defects may be negligible, 
and the curious fact has been discovered that there is 
a larger proportion of physical defects among children 
of normal mentality than among those who are retarded 
intellectually. This, of course, does not argue that it 
is better for a child to have a physical defect. It sim- 
ply goes to show that the figures which are available 
do not analyze these physical defects carefully enough 
to enable us yet to know which are of a serious char- 
acter, and some such defects no doubt are partly ex- 
plained by the fact that retarded children, being older, 
have outgrown the defects that are minor in character. 
The studies so far may show that physical defects are a 
cause, but not the cause of failure in school. There 
are certain defects, however, which cannot be neglected. 
The 1908 report of the superintendent of New York 
City Public Schools recorded an examination of 1,012 
subnormal children. Of these: 

60 per cent, suffered from malnutrition. 



78 " 


" nervous disorders. 


56 " 


" adenoids. 


60 " 


" hypertrophied tonsils 


69 " 


" defective vision. 


30 " 


" defective hearing. 


80 " 


" defective teeth. 



Nearly every child had more than one physical ailment; 
some had several. 



Adenoid growths are known not only to cause chil- 
103 



A Better Start 



dren to be mouth-breathers, but also to deaden their 
hearing and eyesight, and consequently their intel- 
lectuality and acuteness, and to expose them to throat 
and lung diseases. The surgical operation required is 
simple, and the facts seem to show that it should be 
performed on about one out of ten of all the school 
children. 

The special things which the school doctors look 
for are: diseases, particularly contagious and infectious 
cases; mental defects; defective sense organs; other 
physical defects, such as stammering and defective 
teeth. At least 20 per cent, of the children in schools 
are suffering from eye strain. This implies not only 
difficulty and fatigue in doing school work, but medical 
authorities regard it as having an intimate relation 
with far more serious troubles. Medical examiners 
are constantly discovering that the majority of children 
are in immediate need of attention to their teeth, that 
a large proportion have defective hearing, and that a 
great many, and these not entirely from poor families, 
are suffering from malnutrition. 

Careful inspection of children reveals important 
facts which are not upon the surface. It is one of the 
most central facts in pedagogy to-day that muscle 
control means mind control, and that since the mus- 
cles are the organs of the will, it is impossible for a 
child to have strong will-power who has not trained 
muscles. The relation of malnutrition and feeble 
muscular reaction to the child's success as a scholar 
and as a man is, therefore, most apparent. We are be- 
ginning to appreciate among adults the close relation 

104 



Health 

of physical defects to spiritual defeat, and we already 
know that such defects are more proportionately potent 
in the lives of children. Physical examinations of 
children are beginning to be psychological as well as 
physical. Physicians are studying the nature and cause 
of nervousness. They are applying vitality tests, and 
they are discovering that age is not a matter of years, 
but of physical and psychological vitality. 

The application of vitality tests and age tests to 
children in school is important not only for their bear- 
ing upon the children's intellectual and moral present, 
but also in relation to their industrial future. It is 
being recognized as an injustice, both to the communi- 
ty and the child, that the state should issue working 
papers to a young person who in age is fourteen, but 
who in physical or mental development is scarcely 
twelve. It would seem to be a part of the child's 
right to life, health and the pursuit of happiness that 
the child should be protected from entering the world 
of industrial struggle as a weakling, and that the state 
should anticipate certain breakdown caused from the 
child's being put to work before he is fit, by prevent- 
ing the child or his parents from allowing such an 
injustice. 

Regarding the relation of physical to moral abnor- 
malities, it is perhaps enough at this point to quote 
Dr. John J. Cronin's remark: "It is as hard, in my 
opinion, for a truly healthy body to do or think 
wrong, as it is difficult for a defective body to do or 
think right." 

The administration of school examinations suggests 
105 



A Better Start 



many important questions. The tendency in America, 
as in Europe, has been to throw upon the school 
many burdens which anciently belonged to the home. 
We are beginning to ask whether we must in our 
own country entirely follow continental standards, and 
whether we cannot force the home to do a larger share, 
and take a more effective part in the care of children. 
It is argued, with some show of reason, that it is better 
for the school to furnish a free pair of eyeglasses to a 
child, at a cost of one or two dollars, which may make 
possible to that child a year of school life, and which 
will increase its industrial efficiency by many times 
the cost of the eyeglasses. On the other hand, it is 
apparent that if the school is to become a clinic and a 
hospital, it is likely to lose in efficiency as an educa- 
tional institution, it is bound to demand a larger and 
broader staff, and a much greater equipment, and there 
is danger that it will do poorly that which the home 
could do well, and try to do some things which no 
institution but the home can really accomplish. After 
all, the school can only ameliorate, the home must 
cure. Yet the home must be supervised by the school 
for the school's sake, for there is no use treating chil- 
dren in school, if they come to school from centers 
of infection at home. Children bring everything to 
school, from pediculosis to tuberculosis. 

This consideration is emphasized by the fact that 
it is not always the poor whose children are in greatest 
need of attention. In the homes of workingmen 
and even of the well-to-do there is an appalling igno- 
rance of simple facts of child life. Beyond the imme- 

106 



Health 

diate matters of examining and educating children 
themselves for health is the question of educating the 
adult public in health matters. One who makes hun- 
dreds of calls a year, as does the author, among the 
homes of people of more than average intelligence 
learns, sometimes with amusement and sometimes with 
amazement, how many of the crudest superstitions and 
ideas about medicine still exist. Boluses and plasters 
that seem to have come from the Chinese era of medi- 
cal science, reliance upon clairvoyants, use of danger- 
ous drugs and of patent preparations of unknown 
constituents — these are memories of every visiting 
pastor. The unreasoning and ignorant dread of sur- 
gery is even more serious. The inability to distin- 
guish between legitimate and unethical practitioners 
and between the degrees of preparation of various 
schools and individuals also suggests the perils to 
which helpless children are exposed when sick. Prob- 
ably every clergyman could testify of lives endangered 
and perhaps lost directly through such ignorance. 
The magazines have done a service in exposing the 
patent medicine fraud. Dental associations have been 
helpful in pressing to the attention of the public the 
need of early conservation of the teeth. The Health- 
Education League of Boston is publishing some use- 
ful booklets upon subjects medical and hygienic, which 
need treatment, written in readable form. Dr. Woods 
Hutchinson and Dr. Luther H. Gulick have made 
us all their debtors by their attractive and scientifically 
accurate preachments. The recognition of health as a 
public concern tends in the direction not only of pub- 

107 



A Better Start 



licity of information, but even of municipalization of 
medical service. 

Parents, indeed, are usually grateful for medical 
information, and their affection leads them in most in- 
stances to apply more effective means of relief than the 
school could give. In one instance in a community 
of moderate wealth, when reports of physical defects 
were taken by school nurses to the homes, it was 
found that 8 5 per cent, of the parents immediately re- 
sponded by securing needed medical attendance. The 
result of examination of school children thus is an em- 
phasis on the work of the school nurse, and if added 
money is to be spent by school boards and boards of 
health in the physical care of children the most eco- 
nomical and efficient way will be in multiplying the 
number of such nurses to the point where they can 
adequately connect the school, the children and the 
home. 

One other important factor in the betterment of the 
health of children is the constant examination and 
supervision of the sources of food and drink in the 
community. The periodical examination of the city 
water supply, and the supervision of the milk, the 
fruits, the meats, the fish, and the vegetables exposed 
for open sale, are now demanded in every enlightened 
community. The crusade for pure milk, when success- 
ful, will probably do more to save the lives of young 
children, than any other of these attempts to superin- 
tend the food source of any city. 

Those who are interested in this subject are divided 
into two schools: those who insist upon the impor- 

108 



Health 

tance of guarding the purity of milk, by supervising it 
from the time it leaves the milkman in the dairy, 
through the transportation, and unto the receptacle 
for its sale in the city; and those who lay greater em- 
phasis upon purifying the milk itself by pasteuriza- 
tion. The advocates of pasteurization in New York 
City, for example, call attention to the apparent im- 
possibility of watching the thirty-five thousand sources 
of milk supply, while the advocates of supervision of 
the supply call attention to the fact that boiling milk 
does not boil out the dirt. In the smaller cities, at 
least, it has been found feasible to secure cleanly 
dairies, the immediate cooling of the milk, and the 
substitution of sealed bottles for the sale from open 
cans. The multiplication of milk stations where milk 
is pasteurized or scientifically modified for the use of 
infants has saved thousands of lives. These milk sta- 
tions in the well-to-do city or suburban sections are 
well supported, and in the poorer regions are endowed 
by philanthropy. 

One more step is necessary in order that the child 
should receive safe nourishment, and that is the in- 
struction of the mother in the cleanly preparation of 
the milk. Where this has been done it is found that 
mothers using only the ordinary kinds of milk have 
been able, by pasteurizing it themselves, to bring up 
their children safely. Dr. Cronin says that he could 
take one hundred mothers, each with one or two chil- 
dren, and by proper education he could reduce the 
mortality of those children from diarrhoea to 0. 

The great importance of the visiting nurse in 
9 109 



A Better Start 



all health work, as the teacher of the ignorant, the 
caretaker of the sick poor and the guardian of the 
public health, was very cleverly brought out by a 
paraphrase of a well-known parable composed by 
a prominent medical man of Chicago and quoted in 
The Survey: 

"And who is my neighbor? 

"And it came to pass that a mother went down from 
the second to the nineteenth ward and fell among 
microbes, and the microbes increased and multiplied, 
and behold they attacked the baby and the child was 
stripped of its nutrition, and was left half dead. 

"And a certain physician passed that way on the 
same side and wrote a prescription. 

"And in like manner a benevolent countess was 
good to the child, but behold, not good with it; and 
left money and soon passed to the other side and gave 
a vaudeville performance on the Lake Shore Drive for 
the benefit of the South Sea Islanders. 

"But a certain Visiting Nurse as she journeyed came 
to where the child was, and behold, was not only good 
to the child, but good with it, and she poured soap 
and water over the child and put it on a bed, and the 
bed was clean and warm and dry, and the primary 
nutrition of the child waxed and grew and the second- 
ary nutrition did likewise, and there was no more 
retrograde metamorphosis of tissue; and as the Visiting 
Nurse departed, the mother of the child opened her 
mouth and spake in broken English, i Heaven bless 
you, Miss, a thousand times; if you not come, I not 
have my baby.' " 

110 



Health 



REFERENCES 

" Instinct and Health," by Woods Hutchinson. New 
York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1908. A popular book on 
general hygiene and the care of children. 

"Civics and Health," by William H. Allen. Boston: 
Ginn and Co., 1901. A book about school hygiene and 
other matters that affect the health of children. 

"The Medical Inspection of Schools, " by Luther H. 
Gulick and Leonard P. Ayres. New York: Charities Pub- 
lication Committee, 1908. 

"The Visiting Nurse Number' ' of The Survey (then 
Charities), New York, for April 7, 1906, is very valu- 
able. 



BOOK THREE 
BETTERMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 

XIII 

THE NEW EDUCATION 

WE in America have an infinite trust in and ex- 
pectancy for our public schools. We believe 
that they can do everything that ought to be 
done, and we blame them for everything that is not 
done as it ought to be. In the ranks of schoolmen 
themselves, while there is a well-based and irrepressi- 
ble hopefulness, their trust and expectancy are limited. 
The literature and discussions of schoolmasters during 
the last decade have marked a revolution of thought 
and an exceeding great turmoil of spirit. No science 
has advanced more rapidly, and the details of no art 
are being exposed to more searching analysis and 
criticism. 

The discussions begin with the very definition of 
education itself. We express a very large and beauti- 
ful view when we say that education is both unfold- 
ment and adjustment. In this sense of unfoldment the 
definition by President Butler of Columbia is adequate: 
"To help the child to become a master of the spir- 
itual possessions of the race." But the child's mind is 

112 



The New Education 



not to become a mere storehouse; it is to be a power- 
house. Here comes in the place of adjustment. We 
have been in the habit of saying that this adjustment 
of a child must be made to the actual world in which 
he is to live, so that he may intelligently fulfill his 
part in that world. But of late some idealists, like 
Swift, have come along to tell us that this adjustment 
should not be merely an adaptation to a certain set of 
conditions found existing, but that "Education should 
seek to develop a mental plasticity, a capacity for 
understanding and getting control of new situations 
and for making them. . . . The animal method of 
education is for static life — stability; with man it must 
be for dynamic life — change, improvement." Un- 
foldment and adjustment then imply as their goals cul- 
ture and service. Even this definition of education 
does not turn out to be large enough. There is one 
which is more satisfying: Education should teach stu- 
dents to know, to do and to be. The definitions 
which we have been quoting refer only to the educa- 
tion of the intellect. A child is not well educated 
unless we have educated also his will and his character, 
and in saying this we are not yielding to the old view 
that intellect, will, and character are three separate 
compartments of a child's life, but we are simply say- 
ing that we must put into the intellectual processes a 
self-propulsion, to increase and to use them for noble 
ends. Dr. C. Hanford Henderson had this thought 
perhaps most largely when he urged that we should 
educate not only the producer and the consumer but 



also the artist in life. 



113 



Betterment through Education 

And in endeavoring to do these three things we 
have learned not to suppose that teachers are entirely 
the originators of thinking, willing and becoming. 
Do we imagine we are teaching children to think? As 
McMurry replies, "We can't keep them from it." 
Neither can we keep them from willing and becoming. 
Education is after all an interference. The wisest 
education is interference which helps rather than hurts 
the child in learning to know, to do and to be. Dr. 
Wood Hutchinson thinks that if we would just keep a 
child healthy and answer his questions at home, he 
would soon catch up with his playmates at school, 
although after awhile he would miss the stimulus of 
their rivalry and companionship. He would learn to 
read and figure anyway through his play and would 
probably acquire most of the other simpler tools of 
learning. Montaigne was not so far wrong then when 
he said, "The time they lose is the time they gain." 

This struggle for a better definition is not a mere 
quibble about words. We are convinced that the 
olden education, so far as it was conscious, had to do 
chiefly with the one endeavor to help children to 
think rather than to do and to be. Swift says, "After 
the reconstruction followed the Renaissance. Educa- 
tion looked upon its work and saw that it was good, 
and fell asleep." 

The fact that education has had to do almost en- 
tirely with mind training is shown by the statement 
that its one emphasis was placed upon that "mental 
wheelbarrow," called the memory. The first thing we 
did as young children in school was to memorize the 

114 



The New Education 



alphabet. A little later we committed to memory 
interminable lists of words in the spelling-book, chosen 
not because they were immediately to be used, but 
because they would, as was supposed, " train the 
memory." We used to "sing" geography, that is, 
chant together capes and harbors and the names and 
capitals of the states and their boundaries. It was, as 
Dr. Frederic Burk points out, a kind of vocational 
education imposed upon us by sailors. We went 
through the same arithmetic book two or three times 
so as to "fasten it into the memory." The repetitions 
of exercises in writing or rules in grammar and the 
paradigms in Latin and Greek were all regarded as 
"intellectual bones upon which we could sharpen the 
teeth of memory." This idolatry of a certain me- 
chanical activity of the mind was based upon the 
theory of "formal discipline," which was at least as 
old as Locke. It was builded upon a faulty psychol- 
ogy which was as little scientific as phrenology. The 
theory was that the mind is a kind of storage battery, 
and that there is possible a transfer of mental power 
and skill from the acquisition of any one subject to all 
other subjects. Certain subjects of study were chosen 
chiefly because of their supposed adaptability for pur- 
poses of discipline. Mathematics and the classics were 
studied, not for their contents, but because they were 
believed to be good educational gymnastics. Some 
one has satirized the theory of formal discipline by 
urging the study of orchard-robbing in place of the 
ancient classics, on the ground that it develops fore- 
sight, agility and resource in a remarkably useful 

115 



Betterment through Education 

manner. The new theory of apperception has pretty 
nearly disposed of the old theory of general discipline. 
It is true that certain things which are learned make 
it easier for us to learn certain other things, but not 
so much because the mind awakened in one realm 
became alert in air realms as because a known fact is 
the doorway of an unknown fact which has about it at 
least one recognizable factor of a known fact as a 
connection. It cannot be proven that the logic by 
which a child solves a problem in geometry makes 
him any more logical in his other thoughts and actions, 
but it is easily proven that the logic which solves one 
problem is the doorway to the solution of the next 
similar problem. On the other hand, non-organic or 
formal education, as Henderson shows, does not pro- 
duce power, it uses up power. We have, as will be 
seen later, substituted for the doctrine of discipline 
the doctrine of interest, and believe to-day that through 
the latter, wisely utilized, is the means to intellectual 
dynamics. Formal education proposed a discipline, 
the New Education sets up a goal, often definite, some- 
times tentative, always individual. 

The schools, as instruments of formal discipline, 
found their crown and culmination in the college, and 
since the results of such discipline were never quite 
satisfactory in the schools, there grew up a blind trust 
that the college could do what the public schools could 
not accomplish. The college then became, especially 
in Scotland and in New England, a fetich which im- 
posed its standards upon the high schools, and these in 
turn upon the secondary schools, so that the public 

116 



The New Education 



school system became, as some one has said, "a valet' ' 
to the university. And although at no time did one 
hundredth part of American young people reach the 
college doors, yet we have during two centuries of 
American education known the injustice of suffering 
under a school system imposed by the universities. 
The ideal characters to be developed out of these six- 
teen years of preparation are the "gentlemen" of 
Locke, the men of wealth and indolent culture of 
Cicero. Such men were produced especially in New 
England, and they were men of such charm, fine liter- 
ary taste, and often of public service that it is not 
strange that education should desire to produce a race 
of Longfellows, Everetts, and Sumners. To those 
who held this classic view of education it seemed 
almost sacrilege that the nation could be saved by such 
a man as Abraham Lincoln. 

As long as the colleges were looked to, to produce 
the ministers or litterateurs and the cultured men of 
wealth, they were competent to every task. Their 
distinct aim was to train men for leisure rather than for 
labor, to consume rather than to produce. Education 
was saved from impracticability, and its graduates 
were saved from all being men of languid refinement 
by certain conditions of the times. It has been re- 
marked that England has succeeded in educating a 
powerful directing class through its universities by a 
fifteenth century curriculum, because these lads en- 
gage in present century play. New England was 
saved by its pioneer conditions. The boys who went 
to college had learned before they entered, upon the 

117 



Betterment through Education 

farm and in the farm shop, the elements of a score 
of trades. The majority of them earned their way 
through college by manual labor. The colleges had 
not yet heard anything about child-study, but they 
were founded in religious devotion, and the conse- 
crated teachers gave to their small classes an individual 
attention and inspiration which was manhood-making. 
Our new country was opening for exploration and set- 
tlement. New and varied industries were calling for 
men, and the age of science and world-wide commerce 
was beginning. These college graduates, born mostly 
in the country, educated in hand and brain by their 
sturdy farmer fathers, watched over and prayed over 
by their teachers, and then brought face to face with 
inspiring opportunities, received an impetus which 
helps largely to explain how they could become men 
of power under a system of training which we to-day 
do not recognize as containing the elements of power. 
Others who never passed through college met these 
same conditions and were made great by them. 

Of late, however, we have begun to fear that the 
classical college course contains no element of initia- 
tive, that its formal discipline is deadening and dis- 
couraging, and that it tends to turn out a race of 
incapables. The classical high-school course is equally 
faulty. "It is," says David R. Porter, "no better 
adapted to send boys out in life than would be the 
educational system of China." In his "Mind and 
the Making" Swift gives in his first and third chap- 
ters a remarkable catalogue of great men who became 
successful apparently through dodging the efforts of 

118 



The New Education 



their schoolmasters. The geniuses especially seem to 
have come to fruition in spite of all the education that 
had been poured upon them. We begin to see our- 
selves sending forth every spring into the world thou- 
sands of young men and women from our high 
schools and colleges, unfitted and undirected toward 
any specific task, whereas our great brother nation, 
Germany, with its inferior natural advantages and 
access to the world's markets, is annually sending 
forth a literal army of young people, trained to the 
minute for the industrial and commercial tasks of the 
century. We still know how to educate gentlemen, 
but somebody else has to support them. Not only 
have we begun to fear that we have schoolmasters who 
have been resting too long under the dead hand of 
tradition, but their scholars have become persuaded 
that this is the fact. In our tremendous high-school 
enrollment of nearly a million pupils, over 43 per cent. 
of that enrollment is in the freshmen class, 27 per 
cent, in the sophomore, 18 per cent, in the junior, and 
only 12 per cent, in the senior class, "showing," says 
Porter, "that somehow, after the boys get into the 
high schools, they very soon get sick of the job and 
want to get out." "In other words, as soon as stu- 
dents get old enough to think for themselves, they see 
that our schools are not teaching them really to do 
things." 

The new theories of education and the realization 
of these facts are making very rapid changes in our 
approach to the subjects of instruction, and in the 
choice and arrangement of the subjects themselves. 

119 



Betterment through Education 

We may say in general that we are beginning to trans- 
fer our emphasis from the curriculum to the child, 
from form to substance, from repression to expression, 
from the transfer of knowledge to enrichment of life, 
and from an educational system which fits men for lei- 
sure to one which fits them for labor, which trains 
men to produce rather than to consume. The dangers 
of this educational revolution are obvious. There is 
manifest to-day a tendency to neglect the spiritual side 
of education, not only by avoiding the ancient classics 
but by regarding history and literature as unnecessary. 
The writer feels that this tendency is one to be depre- 
cated, but that it is incidental and not necessary to the 
ideals of the new education. 

What are some of the things which education has 
been learning? 

Child-study is the first and greatest. It is no 
longer an easy presumption that because certain facts 
of knowledge exist all the teacher has to do is to get 
the child to memorize them in order to make them his 
possessions. The culture epoch theory, though it 
must not be pressed too far in practical teaching, 
throws a flood of light upon the matter of the way of 
making knowledge accessible to the child. We have 
begun to see, as President Faunce has pointed out, 
that " There are some ways in which we can play on 
an instrument, and some ways in which we cannot. 
Instead of blaming the instrument we had better learn 
the stops." We believe now that the child recapitu- 
lates the intellectual and social stages of the race; that 
he passes through a muscle period when he is educated 

120 



The New Education 



chiefly through the outreach of his fingers, the activi- 
ties of his body and especially the interests of play in 
which he rehearses many of the instincts of the prime- 
val past. Then follows a memory period, which lasts 
for four or five years, when especially we may concen- 
trate drill and rote. This period of verbal memory, 
though precious, soon yields to the period of intellect- 
ual awakening and psychical instincts and the dawn 
of the child's social nature. Finally, in the middle 
adolescent years, appears the power of self-control and 
self-propulsion, which we call "will," in which is 
especially the possibility of the formation of the life 
character. This simple and necessarily vague outline 
has nevertheless begun to revolutionize the school 
curriculum. 

The next important discovery has been that of the 
doctrine of interest. Interest is not mere whim. It 
is "the feeling side of attention." It indicates the 
birth of certain "nascencies," births of aptitude and 
possibility. A child does not like to endeavor to 
solve a problem simply because it presents a challenge 
to his intellectual prowess. As McMurry says, "When 
a boy cracks a nut, he does so because there may be a 
kernel in it, not because the shell is hard." Hutch- 
inson summarizes thus: "The impulses of a child 
mean intellectual and moral good. We mean to make 
them our ally if possible. This in a word is what 
the new education means.' ' The early interests of 
children are in objective things, in form, color and 
action, and in personal and individual examples. The 
natural introduction to geography is not through defini- 

121 



Betterment through Education 

tions and map questions, but through an outdoor walk 
in which the teacher points out the contour of the land- 
scape, through a curiosity to know the customs and 
productions of other countries, and through the men, 
the myths, the history that have lived there. The 
natural introduction to biology is not a definition or a 
discussion, but a living pet. Children learn letters 
and words not because they think they may learn to 
like to read, but the world of wonder which they find 
books contain gives them the reading fever, and they 
learn to read in quite their own spontaneous fashion. 

The interest in working out problems comes later. 
It begins in manual experiments like taking things 
apart, putting them together and constructing them. 
Every door into a new knowledge or a new capacity is 
through the portal of apperceiving. "Children are 
association machines." The interest aroused in a 
known fact leads them to the next which is only par- 
tially known. The interest in formal logic certainly 
does not appear before adolescence. The doctrine of 
interest is, no doubt, a dangerous one. The rights of 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which the Con- 
stitution guarantees, are eagerly sought by all chil- 
dren and are conferred by parents and even by teach- 
ers before they are deserved or can be rightly used. 
"What does it profit a child," asks Dr. David S. 
Snedden, "if he has great interest in learning to spell, 
if he does not learn how to spell?" There is a differ- 
ence between interest in the subject, secured by baits 
and ingenious devices, and that interest which Dr. 
Starbuck has described, where in a certain class in 

122 



The New Education 



geometry, after an adequate and inspiring introduction 
and a gradual and skillful leading of the class from 
point to point, upon a certain day, an especially neat 
demonstration of a problem was greeted by the class 
with loud applause, — the first time perhaps in which 
applause has ever occurred in a geometry lesson! The 
function of the teacher is not to overwhelm the invol- 
untary attention of his scholars by devices, but to help 
his scholars to choose among the various possible in- 
terests those best and most direct ones which shall 
lead, in the subject under study, to results worth while. 

A third doctrine which has been central in modern 
education is the doctrine of play. "Play," says 
George E. Johnson, "was the mother of education." 
After all, the child is built not by his teacher, but by 
himself. Play is both the expression and the inter- 
pretation of his instincts. Its wise use marks the 
transition from self-education to school-mastering edu- 
cation. There is not a study in the curriculum in 
which it must not be consciously and perpetually pres- 
ent, and perhaps no great work in the world is done 
which has not at the heart of its doer play. More of 
this later. 

The fourth central doctrine of the new educational 
creed is the doctrine of will. Here is where the old- 
time school had to be supplemented by life. The 
desire of the new education is to recognize that school 
is life, and to enable the school itself to be an educa- 
tion to the will. We wish the child not only to know 
the facts but how to use the facts, and we realize that 
he does not know and cannot retain any fact which he 

123 



Betterment through Education 

does not at some time use. The school wishes even 
more. It desires to help the child obtain that power 
of self-propulsion which shall enable him clear through 
life to keep himself in motion after his teachers and 
others have stopped pushing him. We have learned 
that the only organs of the will are the muscles. The 
education of the muscles is the education of the will. 
The education of muscle habits is the education of will 
habits. "We will," says G. Stanley Hall, "with all 
that we have willed.' ' To aid a child to choose among 
his various interests the best interest for a present and 
definite purpose is to help him strengthen his will- 
power. To arouse in him the definite conception and 
•longing for a vocation is to educate his will. To 
inspire him, either through the school or the church, 
to live truthfully and purely with himself, which can 
only be done by right choices, is the noblest education 
of the will. 

Still, with all our child study, our emphasis upon 
interest and play and the will, Dr. Woods Hutchin- 
son only echoes the opinion of many critics, when he 
calls our most modern education, "formal, bookish, 
ladylike, irrational and impractical." If this is so it is 
so not because these doctrines are false, but because we 
have not yet had the courage thoroughly to apply 
them or because there are hindrances which must be 
removed before they can be applied. The chief hin- 
drance to modern education is that the child is not 
getting it. An education cannot be called popular 
which the people are not possessing. Recent studies 
show that not only do children suddenly begin to drop 

124 



The New Education 



out of school at the sixth grade, but that we often have 
only one-third as many boys as girls in the high 
schools. The sex which is to do the world's most ac- 
tive work is turning its back upon "popular educa- 
tion." In doing so it is neglecting and losing all the 
rich cultural opportunities of the high school. Not 
only this, but we have discovered that at least one- 
third of the children are retarded from one to four 
years in their school work. This is partly due, as Dr. 
W. D. Sheldon shows, to physical abnormalities, but 
even more to loss of attendance through lack of neces- 
sary clothes, or helping at home, or loss of interest be- 
cause the studies or their presentation are too hard for 
the children, and because there is lack of attention to 
the individual, especially in the earliest grades. Dr. 
Sheldon believes that if we would multiply the pro- 
portion of teachers to pupils in the years when they 
are entering the doors of the schools, if we would ob- 
jectify the approach to new subjects, if we would study 
and remove the causes of truancy, and if we would 
increase medical inspection and care, we should im- 
mensely multiply the efficiency and popularity of 
school work in the first six grades. 

Regarding the truancy problem, Miss Julia Rich- 
man, whose work has been in the crowded East Side 
of New York, believes that, as the causes are various, 
the cures must be various, too. She favors medical 
inspection, more judicious grading, attractive early 
courses evidently leading toward usefulness, smaller 
classes, vocational training as early as the twelfth year 
leading to a variety of occupations, free shops, gymna- 
10 125 



Betterment through Education 

siums and baths, the use of school after school hours, 
entertainments in the schoolhouses of an educational 
and attractive character, diagnosis of truancy cases, 
and city relief when necessary. Further and more 
broadly, she would have special industrial classes 
and industrial day schools, special school and home 
visitors, a sympathetic probation system, an efficient 
truant bureau, an efficient juvenile court, industrial 
parental schools, the affiliation in work of the child- 
helping societies, a good child labor law and a good 
law for compulsory school attendance. This is an 
extensive program, but its features are named in order 
that we may more distinctly see that the problem of 
the effective school cannot be isolated from the other 
child problems of our time. 

Some of the changes which the new education 
suggests, and which are gradually being brought into 
effect, are as follows: 

The greatest change necessary in the curriculum is 
a greater emphasis upon its moral values. This has 
not been dealt with at length in this chapter because it 
will be the subject of another one, but it is central 
in the thought of teachers to-day. 

The school must be more closely related to life, to 
personal experience and to vocation. In the revision 
of the curriculum there will be many changes of em- 
phasis. Arithmetic, which has been something of a 
fetich, will probably be reduced to one-third, and will 
be taught chiefly through the actual problems of the 
school shop, garden and laboratory. Formal mathe- 
matics will come much later in the school course, and 

126 



The New Education 



algebra, which is not generally used and which leads 
to nothing educationally, may become an elective, for 
engineers, etc. All the material that we now divide 
into certain distinct sciences will be gathered into the 
one subject, "the Study of Nature," and a great deal 
of what is now formal language work and drawing 
will be used in the processes of knowing and handling 
the forces and objects of nature. Nature will be ap- 
proached through plants and animals, which the child 
loves, and will be studied through living rather than 
dead objects, and for the purposes of use and beauty 
rather than for scientific analysis and classification. 
The reading books will be broader, containing material 
from the sciences as well as from literature, and a 
greater mass of literary and scientific material will be 
read in the schoolroom. The process of studying 
literature by analysis — "linguistic manicure," as Presi- 
dent Hall calls it — will become obsolete, and children 
instead of gathering a disgust for the best books, as is 
too often true of present methods of studying college 
and preparatory English, will approach the method 
which Lowell advised, of "being tumbled about in 
a library." Modern languages will come very early, 
and will be taught chiefly through conversation, for 
actual use rather than for discipline. History will 
be studied not for the sake of memorizing dates and 
periods, but as an expression of the moral ideals of 
humanity, for as Dr. G. Glenn Atkins says, "We no 
longer speak of the dynasties of kings; we speak of 
the dynasties of ideas." United States history and 
civics will come down into the sixth to the eighth 

127 



Betterment through Education 

grades, for those who are to leave school at fourteen. 
Geography will be more personal, industrial and com- 
mercial, and will deal more with humanity, and less 
with boundaries and names. History, civics and geog- 
raphy are all being studied by the source-method of 
personal discovery. The manual activities of the 
early grades will be continued, and the child's dawn- 
ing demand for the practical will be satisfied by the 
introduction of shop-work at the sixth grade. It is 
quite probable that music, which is the almost uni- 
versal elective of high-school girls who can afford it, 
but which at present must be studied out of school, 
will enter definitely into the high-school curriculum, 
and that home-making studied directly, and the care 
of children, approached indirectly through the study 
of nursing, will be the privilege of girls, and even of 
boys, some time during public-school work. These 
rearrangements may not turn out to be as revolution- 
ary as they seem. The time saved by delaying and 
shortening the course in mathematics, postponing the 
study of formal linguistics, and introducing modern 
languages during the years when they are most easily 
acquired will give room for an enrichment of the cur- 
riculum, which to-day is crowded largely because it 
is not adjusted to the capacity of children. 

The only hindrance to such a program is parents. 
They complain that their young children cannot write, 
spell or figure. They do not realize that if a child is 
learning to think, he can soon do these three largely 
mechanical things, while a child might be able to do 
all three, and still be an incompetent. When parents 

128 



The New Education 



are willing to judge education by its finished product, 
and not by those who are engaged in its first processes, 
they will be eager to support methods which are devel- 
oping agile and self-initiating thinkers. Some com- 
parative facts that have lately come out of Massachu- 
setts show that even in the realm of figuring and 
spelling the boasted pupils of the older schools did 
not in any grade do as good work as our scholars are 
doing to-day. 

Nor will all the older studies be relegated to the 
past. They will rather gain in dignity because they 
are pursued for themselves and not as mere vehicles of 
mind-sharpening. Caesar, Horace, Virgil, Herodo- 
tus, Homer and the Greek Anthology will still have 
their message, and it will be sought more directly and 
enthusiastically, because it is not obscured by eternal 
conjugation-chewing or so-called " Latin composi- 
tion." When a boy approaches Caesar through the 
background of early Gallic history, and Homer 
through the haze of romance and perhaps the help of 
the fine English of Lang, and the great tragedians 
through a love for and a knowledge of the evolution 
of the drama, the classics will come to their own again 
in his heart. Mathematics too, seen as the key to a 
great vocation or career, have a meaning to the youth 
who is beginning to specialize and to see life seriously, 
and some place in the life of those who can be brought 
face to face with the majesty of an exact science, but 
they will not continue to be a perpetual blind alley in 
the pathway of education for those boys and especially 
girls who were not meant for them. 

129 



Betterment through Education 

The new schools will differ from the old not so 
much in the course of study as in the methods of 
approach to different subjects. As Dr. Charles Zeub- 
lin has pointed out,^ — "The newest subjects of instruc- 
tion are those which were formerly unconsciously 
acquired at home." They were acquired uncon- 
sciously because they were inherently so interesting, 
and because exercise in them was called forth by 
actual problems. The new school will endeavor to 
present problems to the child at the time when he is 
naturally asking questions about those things. It 
will approach every subject which can possibly be ap- 
proached thus through the laboratory rather than 
through the library, and much school work, especially 
in the study of nature, of hand-work and of art, will 
be accomplished by taking the children out of the 
schoolhouse to the places where those things can be 
seen, handled, and known. This has already been 
done in one school in Chicago which Zeublin cites, 
where "In the primary grades the active interest of 
the children in the fire department was made the basis 
of their constructive work, giving an easy channel for 
the free use of oral and written language, and lending 
itself naturally to the interest in games, and the finances 
in the fire department were made the basis of arith- 
metic. . . . The sixth grade followed the methods 
of the contractors in planning and building. The 
seventh grade developed from their drawing lesson a 
comprehension of the smoke nuisance. The eighth 
grade followed into the intricacies of sewerage and 
drainage. The mechanical genius of the boys found 

130 



The New Education 



expression in the construction of bridges, locks, boats, 
and all the appurtenances of a drainage canal. This 
subject was not left without a considerable survey of 
the governmental questions involved." The old 
analytical method of approach bored and disgusted the 
child. The new method excites and continues his 
curiosity, develops his will-power through exercise, 
and gives him both a more human and a more scien- 
tific approach to every subject. 

The heuristic method is transforming the recita- 
tion. Teachers are forsaking the easy way of telling 
by lecturing for the harder but more efficient way of 
discovering together. The recitation-room as such is 
becoming a place of report and of "free exploration," 
as Flexner says, of the scholars rather than of the 
serving up of warmed-over facts. The overemphasis 
of writing either recitations or tests, which, as Presi- 
dent G. Stanley Hall suggests, has almost made a 
teacher the conductor of a correspondence school and 
has substituted scholars' letters for teachers' visits, is 
yielding to more direct means of utterance. The post 
mortems, called examinations, are becoming unneces- 
sary except as a classification and clarification of results 
for the benefit of the scholar rather than as a test or 
trial of his memory. 

Home study too, except as a personal quest through 
experiments or by collation of references, is lessening. 
So few scholars know how to study yet that it seems 
better to try to gain concentration in the place where 
it is demanded and can be supervised than to trust 
too early the processes and results that will eventuate 

131 



Betterment through Education 

if the child is sent home for desultory and interrupted 
efforts. 

Schools are gradually moving outdoors. First, we 
had the schools for tuberculous children. Kindergar- 
tens often adjourn outside in all fair kinds of weather. 
The elementary school tends to approach the play- 
ground in character as well as in occupations. At the 
Hyannis Normal School the training school children 
make the school garden the center of correlation and 
get their arithmetic, their language work and their 
drawing as well as their vegetables and flowers out of 
their gardens. Some schools are already taking out 
their windows and we shall soon see schoolhouses 
which are practically outdoor shelters with emergency 
enclosures. 

There are two periods especially when individual 
attention is most important in school work. The first 
of these is at the beginning of school days, when the 
child is making the transition from his own self-educa- 
tion in the home and the yard to the assisted educa- 
tional processes of the school. The other period is in 
those special years of crisis and dawn of will-power, 
which come in adolescence. This period begins with 
the last year in the secondary school and continues 
throughout the high school. The tendency of modern 
education has been to obliterate the old gap between 
the eighth grade and the high school by carrying high- 
school subjects down into that grade and giving the 
children more distinct supervision and encouragement 
than ever before. During this time of the dawn of 
individuality, it is important not only that the child 

132 



The New Education 



should decide to continue his education in school, but 
that his aptitude should be discovered, his choice of 
studies directed and his development of a vocation as- 
sisted. These are especially the years of sensitiveness 
to adult leadership, to hero worship, and individual 
attention at this time is often equivalent to a life- 
long committal to righteousness and service. "Educa- 
tion into individuality," says Dr. Preston W. Search, 
"is the most precious among the fruits of earth." 

There are some special problems in the education 
of the adolescent girl. Professor J. M. Tyler asserts 
that the cause of the frequent breakdown of women 
college students lies back in the overstrain of high- 
school days. And this overstrain is not merely that 
of the school requirements, though the high school is 
perhaps yet to be found that makes due allowance for 
the physical tides in the lives of its girl pupils, but 
from the supplementary music practice and lessons 
and the abounding social engagements of the girl's 
life. Women are not like men in their relation to 
fatigue. A boy works till he is tired, a girl will work 
till her work is done. A girl is more docile, more 
responsive to scholarly stimulus, more willing to plod, 
and more persistent than a boy. Thus she becomes 
the victim of the school. We need not complain if 
college women do. not become mothers, if we make 
them incapable of being so by our neglect of their 
early welfare. The schools must awake to the physical 
needs and care of girls, they must give them separate 
and restful treatment, they must free them from the 
college mold and determine even in their preparatory 

133 



Betterment through Education 

days that they shall have the opportunity to pursue 
then and later womanly and domestic studies. There 
is no doubt room for the college that treats a girl as if 
she were 'a boy and gives her a boy's college educa- 
tion, but parents ought clearly to know just what such 
colleges stand for, and realize that there are others. 

The last and perhaps the most vital thing which 
the new education is attempting is the social empha- 
sis. We are beginning to appreciate to some extent 
the tremendous industrial and social evolution through 
which we are passing. We are realizing that the child 
is not only to a great extent being educated by society 
as well as by the school, but that he must also be edu- 
cated for society. There is creeping into our high 
schools the conception that high-school graduates are 
social conscripts, of whom the republic has a right to 
demand generous and unselfish fraternal and public 
obligations. We may even come to share with Pro- 
fessor William James the conviction expressed in one 
of his last essays, that such a consecration of our edu- 
cated young people is to be the future moral equiva- 
lent for war, enlistment to save rather than to waste 
humanity. 

The ideals of the new education no doubt have a 
certain vagueness compared with the formal categories 
of the old. Vagueness is apt to be the quality of any 
new reform. We may therefore conclude this chapter 
by one more inspiring though vague expression of 
educational ideals. It is Dr. Richard C. Cabot who 
has told us, that "Every human being, man, woman 
and child, knows the blessing of God through three 

134 



The New Education 



and only three great channels — responsibility, recrea- 
tion and affection — work, play and love." This is 
only another way of saying that the ideal of education 
is to help the child to know, to do and to be, for 
knowledge comes through play; doing and work are 
one; and being is the result of love. 

REFERENCES 

' 'The Principles of Education/' by William Carl Rue- 
diger. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910. A good sum- 
mary of the New Education. 

"Education as Adjustment," by M. V. O'Shea. New 
York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903. . A pioneer book 
stating the principles of the New Education. 

"An Ideal School," by Preston W. Search. New York: 
D. Appleton and Co., 1901. A prophetic book outlining 
the future school. 

"Education and the Larger Life," by C. Hanford Hen- 
derson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1902. The ideal- 
ism of an organic education. 

"A Broader Elementary Education," by J. P. Gordy. 
New York: Hinds and Noble, 1903. Contains suggestions 
toward the new curriculum. 

"Educational Aims and Educational Values," by Paul 
H. Hanus. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1899. 

"The Educational Meaning of Manual Arts and Indus- 
tries," by Robert K. Row. Chicago: Row, Peterson and 
Co., 1909. 

"The American College," by Abraham Flexner. New 
York: The Century Co., 1908. A biting criticism, with 
full reference also to the secondary school. 

"School and Society, " by John Dewey. Chicago: The 
University of Chicago Press, 1901. 

135 



XIV 

VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND GUIDANCE 

THERE are only three ways of making a living 
— by begging, stealing and working. Most of 
us believe that the last is the best way. Prep- 
aration for work must, therefore, be a central purpose 
in the education of children. In many ways it is the 
only logical and legitimate training. Vocational train- 
ing may be called a personal right of a child, since 
96 per cent, of all workers are busy in commer- 
cial and industrial fields. The State may train its 
professional workers, it must train its industrial and 
commercial workers. If it be a fact, as has lately been 
stated, that eight of the nine billions of dollars spent 
in this country every year are spent by women, it 
would seem as if the training of our future spenders 
in school would solve a most important economic 
problem. Not only is it a personal right, but it is a 
social necessity. "Education," says Mr. Eli W. Wea- 
ver, "should aim to make of a child a satisfactory 
social unit as well as a profitable industrial unit, to be 
ultimately a capable parent as well as a remunerative 
child worker, having the capacity for readjusting 
himself to changing industrial conditions as well as to 
fit into the low grades of work in some shop." So 
much have English charity workers become persuaded 

136 



Vocational Training and Guidance 

of the necessity of this that they are undertaking to 
prevent poverty and unfortunate social conditions 
through raising the standard of family life among the 
poor by taking one child after another, when he or 
she leaves school, seeking the fullest co-operation of 
the parents, studying the traits of the child, investi- 
gating the conditions of employment, and by means of 
personal encouragement and stimulus, or even in more 
substantial ways, carrying the young worker to the 
point where he has a chance to become a social asset. 
A report of what has been called "The Brooklyn 
Movement" for vocational adjustment puts the matter 
forcibly in this wise: 

"The State does not permit the intelligent and 
wealthy orphan of eighteen to entrust her fortune to 
the keeping of her relative, without the consent and 
foresight of the court, and yet she permits the ill- 
trained but poor boy who has no asset in the world but 
his time and his ambition to sell the same in the 
market without foresight or advice to the employers of 
the city, among whom are those whose inhumanity has 
compelled the legislature to place upon our statute 
books the pitifully inadequate child labor laws. The 
government does not permit a grocer to sell to the 
millionaire a bottle of milk without its supervision, 
and yet it stands idly by while a young man or a boy 
gives the precious years of his youth for less than his 
board and clothes to an employer, in exchange for 
prospects of advancement which the employer knows 
have no existence except in his own 'help wanted' 
advertisement." 

137 



Betterment through Education 

The old education, as Mr. George H. Martin has 
pointed out, was vocational in purpose. It was in- 
tended to fit the youth of the commonwealth to be 
intelligent citizens. The problem then was clearly an 
intellectual one. The principles of self-government 
were to be installed into the minds of] the people. 
What better means to this end could be employed than 
the history and literature of the past? Such studies 
opened up the minds of youth to the understanding of 
the thoughts, aspirations and experiences of those who 
had served as leaders in other times, and enabled the 
rising generation to see in good perspective the reasons 
for the successes and failures of the men of affairs in 
every age. In order that they might study these les- 
sons to the best advantage it was believed necessary 
that they should have minds capable of sustained 
thought, clear and logical reasoning and far-sighted 
judgment. The studies in the classical languages and 
mathematics were thought to be well suited to give 
this training, which was to be the basis of citizenship, 
that the founders of our colleges and Latin schools 
desired. And this in a certain sense shaped the pol- 
icy of the common school. But this was not the 
whole of the old education. In those early times 
there was another institution which provided special 
training for the vocations. This was a system of ap- 
prenticeships, and it included not only the trades but 
the professions. These were the two main elements 
in the original educational system of New England, 
and they went on together for several generations 
without any conflict, each effective in its own way. 

138 



Vocational Training and Guidance 

Intellectual and general training was given by the 
schools, industrial and professional training by appren- 
ticeships. When, however, the old industrial order 
was overturned by the introduction of machinery, by 
the division of labor and by extensive production, 
apprenticeships in the trades were no longer possible, 
'and so that form of industrial education passed away. 
The colleges then introduced technological work for 
the training of engineers, but nowhere was there any 
definite provision for industrial education below the 
grade furnished by the engineering schools. The bal- 
ance of education was thus lost. Industrial education 
suffered by the loss, formal school training derived 
all the gain, until gradually the rational and complete 
education resulting from the natural co-operation of 
the home and the workshop was gone, and the school 
became one-sided and incomplete,, because the children 
while out of school as well as in school came to be 
almost wholly separated from the activities of real life. 
That situation is still only too common in many com- 
munities. The only vocational training which the 
public schools offer to boys is to become bookkeepers 
and stenographers, and the only one open to girls is to 
become school-teachers. The market is already flooded 
with bookkeepers, stenographers and teachers. 

The need of vocational training is emphasized by 
other considerations. As Miss Susan M. Kingsbury 
remarks, "It is the child, and not the parent, who de- 
cides upon the future of the child." " The average 
school," says Dr. Woods Hutchinson, "is a mental 
treadmill for the son of the working class." After 

139 



Betterment through Education 

twelve two distinct agencies are at work impelling the 
child to withdraw from the school — The positive dis- 
like for books, which comes at the age, when it is the 
tendency of the child to do and not to study, coupled 
with the ineffectiveness of the school to meet that nat- 
ural demand of the child; and the desire to follow 'all 
the other boys' into work or to earn enough money 'to 
dress as well as the other girls' who are at work. The 
two years just after grammar school seem to be the 
points of greatest danger. They are the years when 
the child is not yet mature enough to acquire any great 
degree of muscular dexterity or manual skill, while 
they are crammed full of educational potentiality. The 
result is that boys and girls flock into unskilled em- 
ployments which have no future, at just the time when 
they ought to be subjected to the most careful train- 
ing. Chicago has met this difficulty by opening a 
two-year vocational high school. There are also agi- 
tators who demand that education shall direct the activ- 
ities of the child primarily to the end that he may be- 
come a profitable economic unit just as soon as interest 
may compel or inclination may lead him to break away 
from the formal training of the schools. Sometimes 
parents are forced by poverty to send their children 
forth to add to the financial resources of the family, 
and they are often willing to do so because they be- 
lieve that the additional years in high school will not 
make it possible for the child to earn a better living. 
A study of the surroundings of such parents, by Miss 
Kingsbury, persuaded her that 76 per cent, of these 
families could give their children industrial train- 

140 



Vocational Training and Guidance 

ing; that 66 per cent, of the children could have con- 
tinued in school; and that 55 per cent, of the families 
declared they would send their children to trade 
schools. It appears then that through the ignorance 
and shortsightedness of children and their parents 
and the agitation of those who would exploit child 
labor we are allowing our young people to go forth 
into the industrial world, not only unprepared but 
destined to careers of unskilled labor, drudgery and 
poor subsistence. The real situation is somewhat as 
follows. 

Of the twenty -five thousand children in Massachu- 
setts between fourteen and sixteen years of age, who 
were not at school, the investigations for the Massachu- 
setts Commission of Industrial and Technical Educa- 
tion in 1906 showed that five-sixths of these boys and 
girls had not completed the grammar school; that one- 
half of them had not completed the seventh grade; 
and that one-fourth of them had not completed the 
sixth grade. Less than 25 per cent, of them suc- 
ceeded in entering any employment that was worth 
while. "They seldom receive over five dollars before 
they are seventeen, and they reach the height of their 
power before they are twenty, with an income possibly 
of eight to ten dollars. These employments not only 
involve no development of apprenticeships, but that 
the low grade industries are schools for vice and dis- 
honesty rather than virtue and honor and that retro- 
gression and loss of development are certain needs no 
longer to be argued." On the other hand, the figures 
regarding the money value of technical training are 
11 141 



Betterment through Education 

most inspiring. The same study shows that the boys 
leaving school and entering the shop at fourteen are 
likely to begin work at less than four dollars a week, 
and that their maximum wage at twenty-five and ever 
after is twelve dollars, while those who are graduated 
from the technical school at eighteen begin work at 
ten dollars, and at twenty-five are earning thirty-one 
dollars, while their wage scale is still steadily springing 
upward. A study made by Mr. James M. Dodge, 
when he was President of the American Society of 
Mechanical Engineers in 1903, shows that the laborer 
with but primitive rudimentary training, working 
under the immediate and constant supervision of a 
boss, earns ten dollars and twenty cents a week, his 
wage line remaining horizontal through his period of 
usefulness. The apprentice or shop-trained boy, be- 
ginning at three dollars a week at sixteen years of age, 
reaches a maximum of fifteen dollars and eighty cents 
a week at twenty-four, which he retains through his 
period of usefulness. The trade school group, begin- 
ning at sixteen, at twenty-one dollars and fifty cents, 
has caught up within three years with the shop- 
trained group at twenty-five, and continues to a maxi- 
mum of about forty-two dollars. The fourth group 
is of those who receive higher technical training. 
The technical group overtakes the regular apprentice 
in six months, crosses the line of the trade school 
group in three years, and within ten years is earning 
forty-three dollars a week. This does not measure the 
full potentiality of the latter, for, as Mr. Dodge says, 
"A practical man performs his work within the radius 

142 



OUTLINE OF 



The German System^Industrial education. 



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Vocational Training and Guidance 

of his arm, a technical man within the radius of his 
brain." 

An outline of the German System of Industrial 
Education is reprinted from The Survey, in order that 
the reader may see how definitely and systematically a 
neighbor nation has attacked this problem. 

An examination of this schedule will reveal a num- 
ber of significant facts. First, there is compulsory 
attendance at school until fourteen. At the age of 
ten, when the child first begins to be restless and to 
desire to do rather than to study, the alternative oppor- 
tunities of his education begin to appear. The child 
may continue in the common schools until fourteen, 
and then go to work, supplementing his toil by a 
variety of evening continuation schools, or by entering 
special trade schools, with the opportunity to apply 
knowledge in experimental shops, or he may take his 
high-school course, directing his study toward profes- 
sions, trade schools or a business course, and may con- 
tinue through university work of a professional or 
technical character. The German system of industrial 
education does not, as many suppose, teach the ma- 
nipulative process as well as the theory of every trade. 
The primary object of her trade schools is the train- 
ing of foremen, bosses and subordinate officers, the 
non-commissioned officers of her industrial army. 
The journeyman receives his training, not in the trade 
school, but in the industrial continuation school along 
with his work as an apprentice. Such schools to teach 
the art of trades, and not her technical schools, form 
the real heart of the German system of industrial edu- 

143 



Betterment through Education 

cation. While we may not find it wise to copy Ger- 
many, the most important thing we have to do is to 
bridge over the existing gap between public grammar- 
school education and industrial life. But this is not 
all that we have to do. There is danger that we may 
try to give vocational guidance too soon, before the 
capacities of the child have emerged or are feasible. 
The fact that a child is lazy, discontented or restless 
is not an infallible proof that it is a motor-minded 
child. We must also be careful lest, by making too 
definite the child's preparation too early, we build up a 
system of industrial castes and condemn the child to a 
social level from which he can never rise. 

Vocational training, as Mrs. Ella Flagg Young says, 
"must be joined in, not tacked on to our system of 
education. It must be kept elastic as long as possible, 
and even as late as the university there must be left 
some outlets for escape." A young man who entered 
Harvard and, under its too liberal system of electives, 
chose practically nothing but physics and electricity, 
found himself, upon graduation, working side by side 
in the Boston Subway with and at the same wage as a 
working man who had received all his training in night 
schools. He was absolutely unable to pull away from 
his companion because his own technical education had 
been no broader and no deeper than that of the Boston 
night schools. 

As to vocational training, industrial in character, 
the .following general statements may be made. The 
vacation schools first showed the way, and we are 
learning that manual training deserves a place through- 

144 



Vocational Training and Guidance 

out the entire course of study, both for its educational 
value and as a means of self-interpretation to the child. 
Physics, chemistry and even biology, taught for their 
cultural rather than their industrial character, must 
find their way into the grades, and shop work must 
be offered by the sixth year. The purpose of all 
this, in the judgment of Mr. Charles F. Warner, 
is to assume "that the school is a proper place in 
which to employ many of the activities and powers 
that are found exercised in the life and industry 
surrounding the school, and likely to be continued 
in any given community. The school should be con- 
sidered part of life in a real sense; but its main 
purpose is to teach the child how to live; if it should 
teach the children also, in some measure at least, how 
to earn their living, no great harm would be done, 
but that should not be the main object. " Incidentally, 
the industries will not fail to realize the effects of such 
training in greater efficiency, intelligence and skill in 
the youth from such schools, who enter the trades 
after the school days are over. Next will come manual 
training schools. These also will be schools of general 
education, not trade schools. They will train the 
general efficiency of the hand, the eye and the brain, 
and will familiarize the scholar with the elementary 
processes of several trades, thus giving a wide scope of 
choice and a broad view for specialized work afterward. 
Side by side with the manual training high school will 
be the trade school, either public or private. Such 
schools should cover four years of training for pupils 
fourteen or fifteen years of age on admission. It is 

145 



Betterment through Education 

advised that the four years of instruction should be 
divided as follows. The first two years will cover 
general shop instruction, together with related mathe- 
matics, drawing, natural sciences and English. The 
work of the last two years, some of which could be 
gradually completed during the evening or on the 
part-time system, should give the shop instruction for 
particular trades, and, for each trade represented, 
drawing, mathematics, physical or biological science, 
applicable to that trade. The history of America and 
civics should be treated as concretely as possible, and 
shop and business English. Beyond these come the 
technical schools of theory and practice and the tech- 
nological or engineering colleges. Supplementary to 
all these, are the half-time trade and technical schools, 
of which the University of Cincinnati was the pioneer, 
and in which the Y. M. C. A. and some public school 
systems have already made experiments; and the even- 
ing and correspondence schools. 

These ideals of industrial training are already com- 
ing to pass. They involve both a revision and the 
arrangement of the school curriculum that shall give 
manual training and the physical sciences their proper 
cultural places, and also the addition of new public 
and private schools for special vocational purposes. 
They will attract the attention of truants, boys who 
are duller mentally than their mates and who feel the 
tedium of the school, and children who must or desire 
to enter the active work of life as soon as possible. 
They will also fit the needs of the boy or girl of eigh- 
teen who wants to decide upon his life work or to enter 

146 



Vocational Training and Guidance 

upon it. They will also continue to supply the world 
with its leaders in industry and commerce. 

Vocational guidance is just as needful as vocational 
training. Children are precipitated into life in an age 
which has the most complex industrial and social con- 
ditions of any in all history. We must not only 
prepare our children for their industrial future, but we 
must instruct them and their parents as to the fullness 
of their opportunities. The necessity of systematic 
guidance is stated in one of the Brooklyn reports, as 
follows: "The high-school teachers and the school 
authorities spend much of their time in studying the 
requirements of the colleges, planning to advise pupils 
in a broader selection of a college to which they shall 
go, and in fitting pupils properly to win success in the 
college of their choice. This is proper and well, but 
it should be remembered that less than 10 per cent, 
of the pupils who enter high school ever enter col- 
lege. This busy world which these toilers enter is a 
much more complex machine than that which the col- 
lege freshman enters. A wrong choice, a beginning 
under unfavorable conditions, and a failure in the 
chosen field, mean misfortune to the individual and 
a loss to the community." Genius, as Bloomfield 
points out, is just as likely to be born among the poor 
as among the rich, but among the former it is more 
likely to perish for lack of opportunity. This work 
of vocational guidance we are beginning to do in 
various ways. Under the leadership of Mr. Eli W. 
Weaver of the Brooklyn High School, an organization 
called "The Students' Aid Committee" was started 

147 



Betterment through Education 

by the High School Teachers' Association, but with- 
out official connection with the schools. Its purposes 
were to collect information, to seek opportunities for 
promotion and profitable employment for the gradu- 
ates of the high schools of New York City, to advise 
graduates and students of these classes in regard to 
the selection of a suitable vocation, to assist pupils to 
secure employment during vacation, to prepare for the 
use of employers a list of suitable persons, by the aid 
of which help can be selected. This work has ex- 
tended throughout the New York schools, and there is 
now a teacher who is a vocational adviser in every one 
of the high schools of the metropolis. 

It is hoped in New York City that this matter may 
be taken up as a school function in a more definite 
and larger way and the city has been asked for an ap- 
propriation of $10,000 a year to bring the plan into 
effect. In Grand Rapids the school committee in 
cooperation with the Board of Trade supports an em- 
ployment agency, which is a very effective vocation 
bureau. In Foxboro, Mass., an organization is in 
operation in connection with the public library. In 
Cincinnati the Child Labor Law is administered by 
the school authorities, and the head of this bureau has 
interested himself in the matter of properly advising 
those who come to him. In Boston the work is done 
by cooperation of the School Board and the Vocation 
Bureau, and there is also in one of the high schools a 
normal school to train for the work or the profession 
of vocation counselor. In Edinburgh, Scotland, the 
trades unions as well as the employers' and capitalists' 

148 



Vocational Training and Guidance 

associations are allied in the work. Miss Julia Rich- 
man has a counselor working all the time to guide 
her pupils who left school at fourteen. 

The work of vocational guidance began in a more 
individual way, under the efforts of the late Professor 
Frank Parsons, who was the founder of the Vocation 
Bureau of Boston. He originated a system of skillful 
questionaries, by which individuals could undertake 
a self-examination of their own capabilities, and he 
undertook to supplement such knowledge as individ- 
uals could secure for themselves and he could secure of 
them, by a study of the vocational opportunities of 
Boston and vicinity. This work has continued and 
is now being carried on through the Y. M. C. A. and 
several social organizations. 

It has been shown that when students can be influ- 
enced to apply to their teachers or to others for advice 
before going out to seek work, many can be persuaded 
to remain in school until they have acquired a more 
general and extended training, while "the life-career 
motive" may be made, as President Eliot has shown, 
the most potent one for personal improvement. The 
information which is collated as to the educational and 
vocational opportunities open to school children is 
often of inestimable value to them. The most diffi- 
cult and the most vital service rendered is often, as 
Felix Adler says, to prevent waste of energy by per- 
suading young people that there is a great gap between 
their admirations and their endowments. The total 
result of such work must be to greatly prolong the 
average period of training and greatly increase the 

149 



Betterment through Education 

efficiency of those trained, to connect the elementary 
schools with the higher training schools and with em- 
ployers, and eventually multiply the human capital of 
the nation. 

REFERENCES 

4 'The Problem of Vocational Education," by David S. 
Snedden. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910. The best 
summary of the whole subject of vocational education. 

"The Vocational Guidance of Youth, " by Meyer 
Bloomfield. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911. The 
best summary of the present methods of vocational guidance. 

"Industrial Training/' by Charles R. Richards. New 
York: State Bureau of Labor, 1908. A study of the pres- 
ent industrial situation and its needs educationally. 

"Beginnings in Industrial Education, " by Paul H. 
Hanus. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908. A study of 
the economic and educational bearings of industrial educa- 
tion. 

"Industrial Education, " by Harlow S. Person. Boston: 
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1907. A description of the Ger- 
man situation and a statement of our American needs. 

"Vocational Education, " by John M. Gillette. New 
York: American Book Co., 1910. A study from the social 
and the educational standpoints. 

"Choosing a Career, " Brooklyn: E. W. Weaver, 25 
Jefferson Avenue. Two leaflets compiled by a committee of 
teachers, one for boys and one for girls, giving guidance as 
to vocational openings, with full bibliographies. 

The October 5, 1907, number of The Survey (then 
Charities), New York, on "The Movement for Indus- 
trial Education, " is most valuable. 

"The Place of Industries in Education, " by Katherine 
E. Dopp. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1906 

150 



XV 

SOME HIGH-SCHOOL PROBLEMS 

A VISITOR to the assembly-room of a city high 
school will often find the blackboards crowded 
with colored drawings, executed with ingenuity 
and some artistic skill, advertising a dozen different 
student organizations. These "side-shows" to the 
main "circus" have become a very important part of 
modern public school life. They are manifestations 
of varied instincts which are not satisfied in the school 
curriculum, and furnish opportunities for expressions 
of talent for which the school work itself is insuffi- 
cient. Their significance in education is therefore 
great, and progressive high-school teachers are regard- 
ing them as an addition to their own opportunities. 

The most popular of these organizations are those 
for athletic purposes. The athletics of the modern 
high school are usually conducted to-day under the 
auspices of a single association, which either embraces 
all the school in its membership or such as have paid 
a small annual fee. Its affairs are usually in the hands 
of a board, consisting partly of students, partly of the 
alumni and partly of the faculty. The coaching, the 
training and the travel of the representative school 
teams are under the charge of teachers who are engaged 
with this purpose largely in view, and who are especially 

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Betterment through Education 

delegated to these tasks. All who take part in games 
representative of the school are obliged to fill out eligi- 
bility slips, which name the definite sport in which 
they intend to engage, certify to their class standing 
and contain the signed consent of their parents. These 
slips are supplemented by a more or less careful 
physical examination of those students who have made 
these entries, and their practice hours are regulated 
with reference to the periods of home and school 
study. This plan has cured many abuses of school 
athletics, and the incentive of the scholarship require- 
ments is doing a great, deal to-day both to retain ath- 
letic boys in school and to maintain their scholarly 
interests. The schools have not yet entirely overcome 
the danger of overtraining and overstraining boys who 
are in their fast-growing period. The "marathons" 
which swept the country in the fall of 1908 are an 
illustration of this folly. Football fatalities and seri- 
ous accidents are still distressingly common, though 
they seldom occur in schools where there is careful 
coaching. The ambition to gain the coveted "C" or 
"D" or whatever the school "letter" may be pro- 
duces a one-sided paragon, but recently school athletic 
coaches have worked out schemes of track athletes in 
which victories are won only by those who have the 
all-round ability to enter in several different styles of 
contests. This tends toward the English ideal of mak- 
ing every schoolboy a possible contestant and an in- 
terested candidate, and of rewarding the well-developed 
lad of fine general average rather than the "wonder" 
in a single event. 

152 



Some High-School Problems 

The other active school organizations are for liter- 
ary, debating, scientific, dramatic, musical and public 
purposes. Entrance to these organizations is usually 
by election, and the interest is at least partly sustained 
by making them somewhat exclusive. They are usu- 
ally allowed the use of rooms in the school building, 
and their meetings are open to and are often attended 
by the faculty. Positions of leadership in these socie- 
ties are eagerly coveted, and sometimes their respective 
presidents constitute a school council for student gov- 
ernment or advice. Of all these the organization 
which publishes the school paper is perhaps the most 
valuable because the regularity of publication im- 
poses regularity of work, and gives practical experience 
both in literature and in business. Both boys and 
girls are usually admitted to these societies, although 
in the larger schools the boys and the girls organize 
separately. 

Of quite a different character are the secret fraterni- 
ties and sororities which have lately made their appear- 
ance in our high schools, large and small. These 
societies were organized in imitation of the secret 
societies of the colleges. They were, however, created 
in response to no obvious need, and it is the public 
impression that they emulate the worse and not the 
better side of college fraternity life. Their one 
strength is exclusiveness, and they were started in a 
snobbery which had, no doubt, always existed, but 
which is accentuated by publicity. The local chapters 
are usually exceedingly small, and when sometimes 
they are so very small as to seem to have lost signifi- 

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Betterment through Education 

cance, the individual members are sustained in their 
splendid isolation by the realization that they are 
related to chapters in other cities. Unlike the college 
fraternities, there is no delay for examining the char- 
acter and good fellowship of prospective members, but 
boys and girls are pledged even before they enter the 
high school, sometimes at the immature age of twelve 
or thirteen. These organizations tend almost invaria- 
bly to gather the sons and daughters of the rich. The 
standards which they set up are those of position and 
dress and society, rather than those of literary or intel- 
lectual power, and the members are likely rather to 
scorn than enter into the activities of the more serious 
non-secret organizations of the school. They thus 
shut themselves out from some of the most wholesome 
methods of school education. 

While snobbery is not a lovely, it is a very natural 
human trait, and is not entirely unknown among 
adults. There is often a genuine fellowship among 
the members of these secret societies, which is natural 
because the members are chosen from the same neigh- 
borhoods or the same social circle. These friendships 
are cemented by having lunch near the school together, 
by the weekly meetings which are usually held in the 
homes of the members, and by elaborate preparations 
for the annual dance, which is usually the climax of 
the fraternity year. These societies often go into 
school politics and sometimes combine against the 
"barbarians" to control the school offices. Sometimes, 
however, they take the other tack and have nothing to 
do with the other organized school activities, even 

154 



Some High-School Problems 

withholding in proud superiority from other class 
functions. "Exclusiveness runs to spottiness," and 
here is, no doubt, the real danger of high-school fra- 
ternity life. In Chicago, at least, fraternities began 
to rent houses down-town, where dissipation and im- 
morality became common, and sometimes the frater- 
nity which has no down-town center makes down-town 
excursions for the purpose of "seeing life." On the 
other hand, especially in smaller cities, the inner life 
of a fraternity or sorority has little which can be con- 
demned except its baseless feeling of superiority and 
its lack of purpose. The sororities are often simply 
girls' sewing societies, and the fraternities which meet 
in homes do no more harm than to perfume the house 
with smoke and to impose upon the good nature of 
mothers and cooks. 

The general sentiment of intelligent observers is 
invariably hostile toward high-school secret societies. 
"They are," says William Hard, "schools of cliques 
and caste." Figures show that the average scholarly 
standing of fraternity boys is lower than that of out- 
siders. Their instincts and activities tend to disrupt 
the school body. A report in a magazine of one of 
these fraternities makes this naive statement, "Half 
the students will scarcely speak to a fraternity man." 
The implied contrast between "students" and "fra- 
ternity men" is obvious. The tendency of the 
fraternity is toward prematurity, that quality which is 
making American boyhood and girlhood so unlovely 
and unwholesome. The typical product of a frater- 
nity is the disagreeable youth who appears in the early 

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Betterment through Education 

chapters of "Captains Courageous." Though disa- 
greeable like that youngster, he is not hopeless. The 
attitude of college men toward high-school fraternities 
is usually unfriendly. While it is true that some col- 
lege fraternities whose standards of admission are lib- 
eral recruit their ranks from neighboring high-school 
societies, there are both college fraternities and sorori- 
ties of higher rank who deliberately reject any boy or 
girl who has been a member of a high-school secret 
society. 

The situation is not entirely discouraging even so 
far as the young people themselves are concerned. 
Sometimes a high-school boy after he has had a year 
of the fraternity and has realized that its exclusiveness 
is about its only capital yearns for the broader fellow- 
ship of the school life and goes into one of the open 
societies which has a serious purpose. A group of fra- 
ternity members in a state where such organizations 
were proscribed by law actually came to the author one 
day and asked for a course of study, semibiblical in 
character, which they might pursue together, in order 
to make their organization worth while. While the 
"mob" spirit and the imitation of what is typical col- 
lege life sometimes leads these organizations into 
excesses, the individual members are only immature 
boys and girls, and there must be wise methods of 
regulating even such societies, which may prevent the 
harm they are doing and even possibly turn them 
toward good. 

Different methods have been attempted for regulat- 
ing or suppressing these organizations. The charac- 

156 



Some High-School Problems 

teristic American way of dealing with an abuse is to 
pass a law, and several states have hastened to attempt 
their complete abolition. This has usually meant the 
changing of names and the loss to the faculty of the 
schools of the power to control their activities. Some- 
times school principals or school boards have fought 
them by passing regulations, preventing the participa- 
tion of fraternity or sorority members in any school 
function. These members have been forbidden en- 
trance into athletics or into scholastic games, or even 
appearance upon programs at graduation. Such strin- 
gent measures have not always been successful because 
it was still possible to conduct the organizations sub 
rosa, and sometimes the glamor of exclusiveness has 
caused the members to make the sacrifice demanded 
for their faith. Another method of school authorities 
has been to allow the present members to retain their 
membership, but to oblige those entering the school 
to take pledges against joining secret organizations, 
thus cutting off the supply of new members, but not 
depriving present members of their supposed rights. 
The more severe of these repressive policies have 
aligned parents with their children against the school 
authorities and even against the laws. Repression has 
been only partly successful and its results have not 
been entirely fortunate. 

While conditions in some communities may have 
become so serious that repression was sorely demanded, 
the best opinion of schoolmen to-day is in favor of a 
constructive rather than a repressive policy, or, at 
least, of a combination of the two. While the activi- 
12 157 



Betterment through Education 

ties of the fraternity may turn out to be bad, the mem- 
bers themselves are not so much bad as misguided, 
and "If you suppress a bad fraternity, there is still left 
a bad gang." Snobbery though offensive is not 
criminal, and may turn out to be a fact of life which 
has in it something of possible good. School princi- 
pals now see that if they had been more diligent in 
fostering a variety of wholesome societies, many of 
them would not have needed to fight the fraternities. 
The encouragement of these varied organizations and 
the development of an honor society, open only to the 
real achievements which boys and girls most admire, 
membership in which gives the coveted school "let- 
ter," tend both to fill the school life so full that there 
is not much room for secret societies, and also to set 
up standards more attractive than those which the 
secret societies can furnish. The development of 
school pride and school spirit and the enrichment of 
the social life of the school are also helpful antidotes. 
The insistence that every fraternity and sorority shall 
have a faculty member will often solve the entire prob- 
lem, and a teacher who will see in this relationship a 
privilege may find here one of the largest moral op- 
portunities of his school work. The principal who 
acknowledges the claims of the secret societies and 
appeals to their pride often helps them to find a pur- 
pose and to create a body of tradition which may make 
them forceful in the development of their members. 
If parents instead of standing up for their children 
against the school authorities would seek ways to relate 
these societies more closely to the homes they would 

158 



Some High-School Problems 

be aiming more wisely. The churches too have an 
opportunity through the societies which they originate 
for boys and girls in the last year of the grammar 
school to form fellowships strong enough to contend 
against those of the secret societies which the boys and 
girls may enter later. Exclusiveness at its best may 
become noblesse oblige. The fraternity boy who re- 
gards himself and his companions as superior to the 
commonalty of the school may be led to prove this 
superiority by right leadership and through service. 

One of the most hurtful influences which secret 
societies exercise is that against simplicity. The high 
school is a school of the people, and should remain so 
democratic that the poorest boy or girl may not feel 
uncomfortable. High-school teachers have lately been 
starting crusades among their senior classes toward 
simplicity of dress at graduation. It is to be hoped 
that the influence may be felt in the return to a similar 
appropriateness throughout the school year. 

One of the forms of prematurity which the secret 
society encourages is that of too early interest between 
the sexes. The high-school fraternity generally has 
its companion sorority, with which it is informally 
affiliated, and each of them closes its year with a social 
function which involves dress-suits and party gowns, 
taxicabs and flowers, which are not only beyond the 
reach of many of the purses of these young people, 
but are also ridiculously inappropriate to their callow 
years. This is only one of the social facts which 
especially in our large cities is leading educators to 
advocate the abolition of co-education in high-school 

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Betterment through Education 

life. It is being increasingly felt that the sexual strain 
is both unnecessary and unwholesome in the last years 
of common school education. 

All these statements are a part of the great central 
question which we are confronting in America as to 
whether our public high schools are actually making 
better and wiser and more competent men and women. 
The curriculum is being scrutinized. We are anx- 
iously, and even somewhat angrily, asking why this 
college of the people must remain the valet of the 
universities. Why does not the high-school course 
touch real life more closely? If piano-playing and 
vocal music are necessary for the culture of our high- 
school girls, why must the high-school girl add them 
to her crowded course of study by studying and prac- 
ticing them outside of school? Why must the high- 
school girl postpone the study of home-making until 
she has finished her course and is old enough to be 
married? Why does the rural high school fit boys 
only for city life, and why should not the universities 
accept what the high school chooses to study, instead 
of the requirements of medieval ages? Shall not all 
high-school credits be of equal value, and shall not the 
colleges accept them as such? These questions mark 
the most recent tendencies of high-school investigation 
and work. Even more earnestly are the people ask- 
ing as to the moral influence of the high school. Is 
it a chivalrous place? Does it make boys and girls 
better? Does it help them to establish better homes 
and fit them to become the better parents of better 
children? 

160 



Some High-School Problems 



REFERENCES 

"A Modern School," by Paul H. Harms. New York: 
The Macmillan Co., 1901. 

4 'The College Influence on the Public High School, " 
by William MacAndrew. Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen, 1910. 

Henry D. Sheldon's studies of student organizations, 
"Student Life and Customs, " 1901, and "The Institutional 
Activities of American Children," though suggestive, are 
hardly recent enough to cover this new phase of the high- 
school secret societies. 



XVI 

MORAL TRAINING IN SCHOOLS 

THERE are differences of opinion as to whether 
moral instruction is desirable or useful. Some 
would say of morals as Professor H. H. Home 
has said of religion, that "It cannot be taught; it can 
only be imparted." Such assert that knowledge about 
morals is not moral training, and call attention to the 
fact that the prescribed and almost universal instruc- 
tion of children in such a definite moral subject as 
temperance in the public schools has not had a per- 
ceptible effect upon the decrease of the use of intoxi- 
cants or the increase of habits of self-mastery. On 
the other hand, there are those who say that a very im- 
portant function of education is to increase the power 
of the ideas over the instincts, which means that chil- 
dren must have ideas to choose from, and that to 
make a child know what is right must be a help to an 
intelligent and voluntary choice of the right. It is 
something to make a child see goodness clearly enough 
to recognize it. Dr. E. E. Brown says, "Half of 
genuine morality is ideas." And some have para- 
phrased an old proverb by giving as the golden text 
of moral instruction the phrase, "Let youth but 
know." The expression which I have just used, 
"The child must have ideas to choose from," sug- 

162 



Moral Training in Schools 

gests the two practical results sought in moral training 
— intelligence and will. Ethics is ideas, morals is 
practice. It is the advocates of the importance of 
right ideas who emphasize the value of moral instruc- 
tion, while it is the advocates of the importance of 
will-power and habit who rather emphasize action and 
individuality. When we define moral training as edu- 
cation for morals, rather than education in morals, even 
the advocate of will-power will not object to a fair 
grounding of the child in moral distinctions, while 
the advocate of right ideas must acknowledge that 
such intellectual knowledge in itself is only the small- 
est part of a real moral training. 

Not many words are needed to emphasize the need 
of whatever means may be wisely used to give children 
a larger stock of moral ideas and to help them to a con- 
science and the will for goodness. Some of those 
needs were suggested in the introduction to this book: 
the increase of prosperity, the development of a civili- 
zation .which admires success more than duty, the 
dangerous conditions of city life, the mixed element 
of our cosmopolitan population, the abdication by the 
home of many of its olden functions, and especially 
that of moral and religious education — all these make 
the modern situation most urgent. 

The practical side of the discussion is as to the place 
of formal teaching of morals in the schools, and as to 
the incentives that are possible in State schools, which 
shall really affect moral living. 

We have the example before us of two powerful na- 
tions, in which formal education has for a number of 

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Betterment through Education 

years been a definite part of the public school curricu- 
lum. These nations are France and Germany. In 
the schools of France there has been for thirty years a 
compulsory graded program of moral education, with 
an elaborate series of text-books. Its authors sought 
to find what moral qualities are desirable in adults, and 
then proceeded to arrange a program in moral instruc- 
tion which should emphasize all these qualities in turn. 
It is an outline of moral duties rather than a course 
of study suitable to children of public school age. 
The books are catechetical in character. They are 
somewhat brightened by illustrations from real life, 
and each lesson concludes with a formal resume of the 
work of the hour. Although this work has been 
accepted by French parents as a prescribed portion of 
the school course, an impartial study shows that it 
entirely fails to take account of the stages of child 
development, that it does not relate itself to the rest of 
the work of the schools, that it concerns itself with 
the formation of enlightened intelligences but, not of 
strong characters, and that it tends to treat morality as 
a veneer to be put on, rather than as a life to be devel- 
oped. It does not appeal to the sympathy and convic- 
tion of teachers, who alone make moral instruction 
vital, and it almost fails Fouillee's admirable criterion, 
"The teacher should form not memories, but con- 
sciences." As children advance in intelligence this 
program does not command their respect, and the fact 
that it does not reach very deep is shown by an exami- 
nation of the records made by more than three thou- 
sand primary-school children, who were asked to de- 

164 



Moral Training in Schools 

scribe the most beautiful act they had ever seen, about 
half of which were filled chiefly with extracts from the 
moral illustrations with which they had become famil- 
iar in their text-books. The evidence of one teacher 
will not be exceptional who testified, "My prize man 
in morals is the biggest knave of the lot." The chief 
defect of the French system perhaps is that there seems 
to be no attempt to relate this instruction to the school 
habits of the children, to their life together and to 
their associations with their homes and society. Mr. 
Herrold Johnson states that the main defect of the 
French moral instruction is that "It has no vista, no 
escape into the ideal and the Infinite." In saying this 
he does not refer to the very meager recognition of the 
existence of God and of the life immortal, but to the 
fact that all this teaching is commonplace and un- 
touched with poetry and imagination. The attempt 
to secularize the schools has deprived them of certain 
influences which are universal and legitimate, such as 
that of sacred art, the uplift of the cathedrals and 
hymns and poems of aspiration. There are just com- 
ing into being supplementary books for French use, in 
which morals are treated not from the point of view of a 
syllabus but by means of heroic and inspiring stories, 
and here at length the elements of idealization and of 
actual approach to the child mind are beginning to 
receive their place. 

While the system of moral instruction in France is 
absolutely divorced from religion, that of Germany is 
under the control of the State church. Whereas the 
French system builds upon a code of morals, the Ger- 

165 



Betterment through Education 

man teaching is based upon the historical personages, 
the leading facts and events of Scripture, reinforced by 
the mempry of about fifty of the great hymns of the 
Church. This instruction starts from a conservative 
view of the Bible, and its working out in detail de- 
pends upon the scholarship and ideals of the individ- 
ual teacher. One teacher may make the work a 
philological excursion; another may present orthodox 
beliefs; a third may give dry moralization; and another 
may indulge in sentimental esthetic reflections. It is 
freely acknowledged that religious instruction has 
remained untouched not only by modern scholarship 
but also by modern pedagogy. It contains dogmatic 
material such as the catechism and the church creed, 
which belong rather to the church than to the school. 
It is probably more effective with young children than 
with older ones, but it poorly prepares for views of 
the Bible and Christian thought which they will meet 
in the university and modern life. Intelligent Ger- 
mans think it not far from the truth to quote a saying 
of one of their eminent theologians, that the German 
people must have much religion in their hearts, inas- 
much as their system of religious education has not yet 
rooted it all out. There is, however, something de- 
sirable in the retention of the Bible in the schools as 
the necessary furniture of a cultivated mind, and it is 
agreed that where the teachers are not only competent 
but reverent men, keeping that close contact with the 
lives of their scholars, which is more common in Ger- 
many than in France, they often succeed by their per- 
sonality, their example and their skillfulness in pro- 

166 



Moral Training in Schools 

ducing or helping to produce moral characters of 
intelligence and will-power. Instances are related 
where, in the younger grades, the dramatic portrayal 
of an Old Testament story has brought sympathetic 
tears to the eyes of the class, while the moral of the 
tale was evidently received into the eager apprehen- 
sions of all present. Observation also shows that 
among older scholars the contact of the master with his 
boys, in the informal excursions which are so common 
in Germany for botanizing or for visiting historic 
sites, gives to the more formal teaching of the class- 
room a vitality which is character-producing. 

Evidently the lessons which we can learn from 
these two countries are only indirect. That both have 
thought it worth while, each according to the genius 
of its own people, to make this matter a definite part 
of the work of the schools should be encouraging to 
us to give our children, according to the best wisdom 
of our race, an adequate possession of the spiritual 
riches of the race. We shall probably find it wise to 
substitute for the library method of the French some 
kind of a laboratory method. While we cannot expect 
ever to place moral instruction in our schools under 
the control of the churches, it is a fair question why, if 
we allow our boys and girls to become familiar with 
the religions of Greece and Rome, and the ethical ideas 
of the classical poets and orators, we may not also in- 
form them of the religious ideas of the Hebrews, and 
of the ethics of their prophets, psalmists and religious 
teachers. And while our young people are becoming 
familiar with the English classics, is there not some 

167 



Betterment through Education 

way by which they may be taught to know our greatest 
classic, the English Bible? But does this constitute 
training in morals? 

During the last few years many earnest studies and 
experiments have been made in this country in this 
realm of moral training. The most valuable guid- 
ance, no doubt, has come from child study, which 
may enable us to avoid the French error of neglecting 
to consider the receptivity of the child. We have 
discovered that little children are not moral or im- 
moral, but display "a disorderly jumble of impulses, 
each pushing itself upward in lively contest with the 
others, some toward what is bad, some toward what is 
good." The years between six or eight and twelve 
have been defined as "barbarian." The child then is 
strongly conscious of his physical energies and is busy 
in satisfying the instincts of play and the appetites 
of sleep and food. He is strongly imitative, gener- 
ally docile, and incapable of appreciating ideals apart 
from strong personal attachments. He is much of a 
conservative and tends to follow willingly in beaten 
paths. With the approach of adolescence there is a 
short period of intense moral feeling, verging upon 
sentimentality, which later deepens down to a gradual 
evolution of individuality and will-power. The early 
years of adolescence are still strongly characterized by 
hero worship, and the power of dwelling upon abstrac- 
tions and philosophizing about ethics does not begin 
to be possible until the later years of the period. 

We seem, from this brief synopsis, to be guided to 
the conviction that yoting children need to be habitua- 

168 



Moral Training in Schools 

ted to the moral code of their elders, and as the best 
way to get good habits is by getting good deeds, any 
moral code which is communicated must be supple- 
mented by a varied school discipline which shall make 
possible the exercise of many simple virtues, by a 
supervision of play, sufficient at least to secure fairness 
and honor, by a self-government of the class .and of 
the individual, but most of all through the character 
of the teacher and by the attachment of the scholars to 
the virtues which he exemplifies. When the years of 
strong feeling appear, there is opportunity, by enthu- 
siastic approach to new subjects and by bringing out 
the great moralities as expressed in the classics, Eng- 
lish literature and the sciences, through school loyalty 
and team work in play and work, to satisfy the moral 
sentiments of that period. "In teaching anything we 
teach morals, ' ' says Professor George H. Palmer. In 
the later high-school years opportunities of responsi- 
bility and leadership, the endeavor to teach the schol- 
ars to respond to large things in a large way, and not 
as the school too often does to little things in a little 
way, and still better, forcing each individual to meet 
real moral crises by actual personal decisions, these 
will help attain the supreme end of moral training, 
self-propulsion, personal honor as well as conscience, 
and that real morality which exists when the moral 
man obeys himself. 

All this so far is informal and indefinite. Our 
best knowledge of formal training leads us to suppose 
that it may be best given in the earlier years, not 
through types of theory, but by stories, each of which 

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Betterment through Education 

is a type of real virtue. These stories must answer 
questions which are already being raised by the chil- 
dren, or which refer to experiences or acts of their 
own. In the use of these stories it is necessary to 
remember the truism that, when it is necessary to point 
a moral it is useless to point one, because the child is 
so insistent upon making his own applications that 
when we lug in lessons of our own we entirely miss 
the point. We must often, in moral training, forget 
that we are moralists, and remember that these are 
children. It is probably impossible to prepare a book 
even of moral stories which can be used in consecutive 
order. The teacher who is a physician of the soul 
will apply his medicines according as they are needed, 
and will reiterate stories which bear upon certain truths 
until the children continue to live them, until the 
right paths are worn. There must be, no doubt, a 
code in the teacher's mind, but there never seems to 
be a time before the adult years when it is wise to 
communicate that code in set terms to children. This 
does not mean that immortal phrases containing golden 
texts are not of use, but they become memorable for 
their poetry and through their relation to great stories 
and great experiences rather than because they are ex- 
pressions of morality. 

In early adolescence the method of story-telling 
yields to that of biography, and moral instruction is 
best given through the lives of great men and through 
great fiction which has made characters passing through 
moral experiences as real as if they had actually lived. 
When we try to teach morals by mere words the 

170 



Moral Training in Schools 

scholar gets words, but when we do so through lives 
he gets images and ideas. The pointing of a moral is 
just as impertinent here as in the earlier years, but it 
is now feasible and desirable to get the young people 
to state aloud and definitely the morals which they 
themselves have discovered. By the age of sixteen an 
entirely new method of moral training becomes possi- 
ble, which is yet almost untried. It might be called 
that of the "case" system. By placing before the 
young people actual or supposed instances involving 
simple or complex moral situations they are enabled to 
engage in practical casuistry and to make separately 
and conjunctly moral decisions, which honestly made 
are likely to become effective in their own conduct. 
Even here let us not force introspection too early. 
Such books might properly be followed by text-books 
on social service, which should emphasize a larger 
view of patriotism, deal with matters of civic health, 
and culminate in practical determinations for good 
citizenship. 

These statements involve an individual system of 
moral training, which in its completeness we have 
nowhere attained, the materials of which, however, are 
gradually being brought together and experiments in 
which are being made that are most hopeful. We 
shall soon have available a practical series of text- 
books which, when completed, should consist for the 
scholars of collections of great stories, selections of 
great classics, chosen not for gerund-grinding and 
wearisome analysis, but for moral inspiration, and 
books on actual ethical situations. These will be ac- 

171 



Betterment through Education 

companied by graded guide-books for teachers, con- 
taining the principles which have been suggested, and 
showing definitely how to apply them according to 
the advancing needs and capacities of the young. 

The importance and the need of instruction in all 
the facts of physical life has suggested the inquiry 
whether sex-instruction may be proper as a subject of 
general instruction in schools. Some successful ex- 
periments in the teaching of biology have indicated 
that it is possible through this means to give to chil- 
dren and young people the varied information which 
their advancing maturity requires, which may be their 
protection, while it is thought possible in separate 
classes of the high school to apply some of those posi- 
tive moral incentives and deterrents which shall help to 
carry them through the stormy adolescent years. Al- 
ready ethical specialists are querying whether we may 
not overstress the need of information about and fear of 
the consequences of impurity and fail to see that the es- 
sential thing is the securing of right emotional atti- 
tudes. The moral conditions in some schools, city and 
country, are such that friends of morals may be par- 
doned if they seem to be extremists in their determi- 
nation to make them better. 

Two great difficulties in the way of moral training 
remain. One is that the great majority of graduates 
from the public school are still morally immature. 
The most permanently practical methods of training, 
viz. : those which affect the will, are largely impotent 
before the development of individuality. All that the 
teacher in the grades can hope to do is to inspire the 

172 



Moral Training in Schools 

children to love goodness as they behold it in herself, 
or visualize it in their heroes, and to begin to practice 
good physical habits. The school unfortunately must 
leave to society the completion and solidifying of the 
moral character during the years of the growth of the 
will, and for this task society is sadly incompetent. 
The two special perils to all of us in living a moral life 
are probably overstrain and wearing out, the sudden 
and the gradual failure of the moral will. The school 
can hardly anticipate these stages thoroughly. Reli- 
gion, if it be persistently applied, is the true safeguard, 
but many people never come into real contact with the 
religious motives, and society is not yet geared to be an 
efficient moral stimulus. The most it can do is, by its 
deterrents and penalties, to keep an outward restraint 
upon conduct and preserve the conventionalities. 

The other difficulty is a kindred one, viz. : that 
the school is not the only moral influence which affects 
the young. The child may go from a school of moral 
ideals, and perhaps to a dissolute or undisciplined 
home. And "the family," as some one says, "is social 
atmosphere." He may be touched by the degrading 
influences of the street as many hours as he is by the 
uplifting influences of the school. He may be entirely 
without the co-operative moral help of the church. 
Happy indeed is the child who lives in what Dr. Rufus 
M. Jones has happily called, "a righteousness-vortex," 
about whom the influences of the conjunct life are 
spread like angelic wings in purity and love. Such 
a heritage is denied to multitudes of children, and the 
Roman Catholic and the Protestant churchmen alike 
13 173 



Betterment through Education 

are agreed that without it moral training in the schools, 
though helpful, must forever be imperfect. 

REFERENCES 

4 * Moral Education in American Schools, " by H. This- 
tleton Mark, privately printed, 1903. An account of the 
American situation. 

' 'Moral Instruction and Training in Schools, Michael 
E. Sadler, Editor. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 
1908. A report of an international inquiry. 

"Moral Principles in Education," by John Dewey. 
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909. A discussion of 
education as a socially moral process. 

"The Making of Character, " by John MacCunn. New 
York: The Macmillan Co., 1900. A discussion of the 
means and methods of moral education. 

"Ethical and Moral Instruction in Schools, "by George 
H. Palmer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909. A study 
of the effects of school life on moral development, with the 
deprecation of formal teaching of ethics. 



XVII 

THE SOCIAL SCHOOL 

THRIFTY Americans have begun to feel that the 
use of their extensive school plants for not more 
than seven hours a day during one hundred and 
eighty days of the year is a waste of opportunity. The 
educational needs of working people, old and young, 
and the social needs of neighborhoods, rich and poor, 
have suggested the larger use of schoolhouses. And 
now, many of the schoolhouses in our cities are util- 
ized for various purposes twelve hours a day during 
nearly every day in the year. The most thorough 
study of these wider uses of the school plant is that 
which has been made for the Russell Sage Foundation 
by Clarence Arthur Perry, and to this study we are 
indebted for much of the facts in this chapter. Mr. 
Perry classifies the uses of schoolhouses, outside regu- 
lar school hours, as follows: 

Evening Schools. 

Vacation Schools. 

School Playgrounds. 

Public Lectures and Entertainments. 

Recreation Centers. 

Social Centers. 

Organized Athletics, Games and Folk 

Dancing. 
Meetings. 

175 



Betterment through Education 

Of these uses the fourth and eighth are almost 
entirely for adults. 

EVENING SCHOOLS 

Evening Schools represent the first extension use 
of schoolhouses. The scholars are usually above 
fourteen years of age and are generally employed dur- 
ing the daytime. Of course, the work is practical, 
"stripped to its fighting clothes." Its single purpose 
is to give those who are entangled in the industrial 
machinery a means of escape. It usually includes 
reading, arithmetic, composition, penmanship, draw- 
ing, geography, hygiene, physical training, American 
history, civics, book-keeping, sewing, millinery, dress- 
making and cooking. An important part of the ele- 
mentary work is that of teaching English to foreign- 
ers. In Chicago 57 per cent, of those registered enter 
the English classes for foreigners. In the evening 
trade schools such subjects are taught as carpentry 
and joinery, cabinet-making, pattern-making, black- 
smithing, machinery, shop work, printing and type- 
setting, mathematics, free-hand, architectural and 
mechanical drawing, machine designing, applied elec- 
tricity, engineering, electric wiring and installation, 
industrial chemistry, applied physics, advanced dress- 
making, millinery and domestic science. 

These evening schools have few problems of disci- 
pline. After the first sifting out process, those who 
remain are serious-minded. Each is anxious to make 
the most of his limited opportunities, and the methods 
of instruction are almost entirely individual. These 

176 



The Social Schools 



classes are usually so wisely conducted as to retain the 
confidence and support both of the employers and the 
labor unions. In some states it is being realized that 
a child has no right to do himself the injustice of go- 
ing out into the world inadequately equipped for the 
duties and competitions of life. The compulsory sys- 
tem has already been adopted in nearly the whole of 
Germany, at least for young people up to the age of 
sixteen, seventeen or eighteen years. The Massachu- 
setts law is to the effect that wherever a public evening 
school is maintained, which any minor leaves who is 
over fourteen years of age and who cannot produce a 
certificate as to his ability to read at sight and write 
legibly simple sentences in the English language, no 
person shall employ him unless he is a regular atten- 
dant at an evening school or at a day school. In order 
to make it easier for working people to attend without 
the weariness and loss of time occasioned by going to 
their homes for supper it has been proposed that the 
schoolhouses which furnish noon lunches should also 
furnish a simple supper to those who are on their way 
to the evening classes. 

While the course of study is severely practical, there 
is often the celebfation of patriotic anniversaries, 
sometimes instruction in chorus singing, often the use 
of the gymnasium, and in the manual training depart- 
ment the opportunity of making at Christmas-time 
baskets, calendars and other articles for gift purposes, 
just as is done in the day schools. There is also close 
correlation with the recreation and social centers, with 
their opportunities for relaxation. 

177 



Betterment through Education 



VACATION SCHOOLS 

The Vacation or Summer School is entirely for 
children of school age. The first purpose was to take 
these children off the hot and crowded streets to places 
of physical and moral safety. It is now being recog- 
nized that continuous education is not necessarily un- 
healthy if it be pursued under healthful conditions. 
The instruction is nearly all in the nature of hand- 
work. There is almost no work with books. The 
children receive instruction in chair-making, basketry, 
bench work and fret sawing, elementary woodwork, 
Venetian ironwork, cutting, elementary sew 7 ing, dress- 
making, millinery and embroidery. They are also in- 
structed in the domestic arts and cooking. The very 
small children are given kindergarten work. Certain 
cities have added such new courses as lessons in first 
aid, clay modeling and kite-making. Games are in- 
troduced, both for educational and social purposes. 
These are selected with regard to their cheapness, so 
that the families of the children may be able to buy 
some of them for home amusement during the long 
winter evenings. The class work is relieved by a free 
recess and by supervised marches, drills and skipping 
games, and by songs and stories. In Cincinnati there 
is a mothers' meeting one afternoon a week at each of 
the vacation schools, including a program of music 
and recitations in which the children take part. In 
New York City the talks on city history are made 
more impressive by excursions under the care of the 
teachers, to various historical places. In other cities 

178 



The Social Schools 



they are taken nearly every week to one of the parks 
or to the zoo, or to a concert in a park or a music hall. 
The average cost of these schools for a summer is not 
more than three dollars a pupil. 

The influence of these schools has been much 
broader than was anticipated. Not only have the lives 
and health of multitudes of children been saved, but 
the street gangs have been broken up, and the boys 
have been so wholesomely busy that they have ceased 
to be a nuisance. As the result of instruction the liv- 
ing conditions of families have been improved. The 
children have returned to the public schools in the fall 
less demoralized in health, morals and readiness for 
work than otherwise. Many have obtained promotion 
as the result of attendance at vacation schools, which 
they could not have reached otherwise. The educa- 
tional fruitage has been large. In some cities indus- 
trial and domestic science departments have been put 
in a number of the day schools, as the result of the 
vacation schools. The school work has felt the influ- 
ence of the manual and play methods of the summer- 
time, since many of the summer classes have been con- 
ducted by the same teachers as those in the winter. 
Some of the children have said that this was the first 
work they had ever done with all their might. Alert 
teachers have not been slow to learn the educational 
lesson of such enthusiasm. 

SCHOOL PLAYGROUNDS 

The school playground is usually open from one to 
half past five daily, during most of the summer vaca- 

179 



Betterment through Education' 

tion. After assembly, with singing, the salute of the 
flag, and perhaps a short talk, there are alternately, or- 
ganized games, organized free play, and apparatus-and- 
occupation-work. The supervisors arrange the pro- 
gram so that all the children enjoy in turn the whole 
list of play opportunities. Sometimes clubs are or- 
ganized for more or less serious purposes. Occasion- 
ally a play or tableaux are prepared. There is a ten- 
dency to insert hand work. Folk dancing is taught. 
In Los Angeles brass bands have been organized. 

The line between a school playground and the va- 
cation school tends to become an imaginary one, and 
while there is usually not room in the same yard to 
conduct a vacation school and a playground, some of 
the instructive activities of vacation schools appear in 
all the best school playgrounds. The shower baths of 
the school are always used, or if they do not exist, may 
be inexpensively provided. Many cities equip their 
school playgrounds with traveling libraries selected 
from the public library, being used in one yard after 
another. The youngest children gather around the 
sand pile, in the care of trained kindergartners. Even 
babies are admitted with their mothers or older broth- 
ers and sisters, and are given a tent in a corner. An 
outdoor day nursery is provided in Cleveland in one 
of the congested districts, open through the long sum- 
mer days, under the care of trained nurses. The ad- 
dition of nurses to a playground staff is being urged 
everywhere, especially for their practical help in the 
instruction of mothers and in the care of babies. 

School playgrounds usually originate in a parent- 
180 



The Social Schools 



teachers' association, a civic club or some women's or- 
ganization. Whatever may be the auspices under 
which park playgrounds are conducted, playgrounds 
on school property are usually under the charge of 
boards of education. In Boston all the playgrounds 
are in charge of the head of the School Department of 
Hygiene, part of the expenses being borne by the Park 
Commission. 

The results of school playground work have been 
just as happy as those of vacation schools. There has 
been a lessening of the loss of children's lives, due to 
accidents in the street or to their frequenting railroad 
tracks and dangerous swimming places. There has 
been an Americanizing influence in the amalgamation 
of various races during childhood through play. There 
has been a new and happier relation to the school 
authorities. The relief of mothers from the care of 
toddlers and from the worry over mischievous children 
has given them more time and energy for their 
household tasks. The wage-earner himself has been 
enheartened and made more efficient through the con- 
sequent relief to his wife. The moral efficiency of the 
playground does not extend beyond the radius of a 
quarter of a mile. Within that radius it is claimed 
that it reduces juvenile delinquency over 40 per 
cent. 

PUBLIC LECTURES AND ENTERTAINMENTS 

School children are not usually admitted to even- 
ing lectures in schoolhouses, although sometimes glee 
clubs from the grades have an introductory part in the 

181 



Betterment through Education 

lecture program. In Cleveland and in Newark" no 
disorder has resulted from the admission of advanced 
pupils of the grammar schools. Subjects interesting 
to children of this age have been especially selected, 
and it has been felt that the regard for the future of 
the lecture system requires the training of young peo- 
ple in the lecture habit. The Moral Education Board 
of Baltimore has prepared an excellent series of talks 
for school children, illustrated by the stereopticon. 
The Board sends its experts from place to place to give 
a demonstration lecture, sometimes in the day-time and 
sometimes in the evening, and afterward such lectures 
can be given by school principal or teacher. The 
purpose of these lectures is to illustrate morality 
by exhibitions upon the screen of moral virtues in 
action. 

Many schools are now equipped with a stereopticon, 
and the Board of Education furnishes a liberal collec- 
tion of slides. Informal talks are given by teachers, 
illustrating the various subjects of school study, and 
the children themselves speak extemporaneously in 
the presence of the slides. This work is done, of 
course, during the school hours, but in the city of De- 
troit the great collection of slides owned by the Art 
Museum is available to the school-teachers, and schol- 
ars from different schools are taken to the museum 
during or after school hours, to listen to educative 
talks by the museum officials. The slides are also 
loaned to the schools and are often used in the evening 
lecture courses. 



182 



The Social Schools 



RECREATION CENTERS 

A recreation center is a schoolhouse transformed 
into a playhouse. There is usually a room for quiet 
games, a space for quoits, ping pong and lively games 
which can be played in a moderate space, and if the 
building allows, a gymnasium with its calisthenics, 
basket-ball and track athletics. In the New York City 
centers each person who enters is obliged to become a 
member of a club. Each club is required to hold a 
weekly business meeting, under the supervision of the 
club director, and to possess some knowledge of hy- 
giene, civics and American history. The problem of 
dancing has been faced in the New York centers. An 
executive committee of boys and girls passes upon the 
names of proposed members, who have to be indorsed 
before they can be presented. The small dues not 
only meet the expenses of a violinist and the waxing 
of the floor, but afford the members additional enjoy- 
ment through entertainments and outings. The re- 
sults have been most encouraging. On the East Side 
a group of twenty girls, designated by the police as one 
of the worst gangs in the region, has been gathered in 
bodily, and is now tamed and decent. Says one prin- 
cipal, "We have watched many of our girls change 
from the silly attitude toward the boys to that of prac- 
tical indifference or open, frank comradeship, and have 
seen young men who at first came in untidy of dress and 
unclean of person appear in clean linen, tidy clothes 
and freshly shaven faces." A director of recreation 
centers relates that on the evening of St. Patrick's Day 

183 



Betterment through Education 

he visited an East Side dancing class, and found one 
hundred and fifty young people enjoying themselves 
in a wholesome manner, while in a notorious neigh- 
boring dance hall across the way, both larger and easier 
of access, there were only thirty on the floor. 

These recreation centers have had larger results 
than could have been anticipated. They too have 
brought together in a friendly way the people of many 
races, and have created a neighborhood sentiment and 
loyalty. They have developed civic activities and 
have become not a substitute for but a recruiting 
ground for the public night schools. 

SOCIAL CENTERS 

A social center differs from a recreation center in 
the fact that it assumes a greater variety of activities. 
It has been defined by Mr. Edward J. Ward as fol- 
lows: "It insists that through its extended use of the 
school building might be developed, in the meetings 
of our complex life or community interests, the neigh- 
borly spirit of democracy that we knew before we 
came to the city." Mr. Ward also vigorously insists 
that it is not to be attached in the public mind as 
either "a rough neck or a low neck institution." It 
is in every neighborhood for all who live in the neigh- 
borhood. While the men's and women's clubs are 
predominant, there is also a place for children. The 
boys' and girls' clubs may be dramatic, civic or social 
in character. They may make use of the library, the 
gymnasium, the baths and the club-rooms. They 
require salaried officials, who are given an oppor- 

184 



The Social Schools 



tunity to utilize the social enthusiasm of volunteer 
workers. 

ORGANIZED ATHLETICS, GAMES AND FOLK DANCING 

Because of its importance Mr. Perry gives this 
subject a special chapter. Much of this work is done 
on the school playground, but part of it is accom- 
plished indoors in the school gymnasium. The spe- 
cial points of interest which he emphasizes are these: 
The organization of public schools athletic leagues, 
with the hearty co-operation of school boards, tends to 
control and uplift the entire athletic activities of the 
young people of any community. These leagues have 
developed interest in competitions, in which the ath- 
letic prowess of whole classes are involved — thus stim- 
ulating healthful activities on the part of all and induc- 
ing the more expert to take a friendly interest in the 
development of poorer athletes. These leagues usu- 
ally require a fairly high record in scholarship for en- 
trance. The desire to be enrolled induces many a boy 
to improve his school work. In New York City the 
schoolboys themselves choose school police to keep 
order on the way to the meetings. The championship 
meetings are well conducted, and are crowned by the 
presentation of athletic badges, which are keenly prized. 
The coaches and officials of these games are teachers, 
and the result has been a strong alliance of teacher and 
pupils, which it is difficult to secure when the only 
relationship is that maintained during school hours. 
Everywhere these leagues have fostered clean sport, 
and sometimes have brought out fine instances of eth- 

185 



Betterment through Education 

ically splendid conduct. In the New York schools 
training in target practice has been encouraged, and a 
fine quality of marksmanship has been developed. 

Similar leagues are being organized among girls. 
Folk dancing is the most popular activity because it 
has been found that more girls can engage in the same 
space than in either class athletics or team games; that 
one teacher can instruct more pupils in dancing than 
in any form of athletics; and that it affords girls more 
pleasure and wholesome exercise than the games and 
sports. In order to avoid the evils which might arise 
from wholesale instruction in an art which is so much 
employed on the stage, these leagues forbid any indi- 
vidual dancing or any exhibition to which an admis- 
sion fee is charged. The favorite game among girls 
is basket-ball. Younger children often gather for 
winding may-poles. It has not generally been found 
to be wise to encourage games between schools, so the 
athletic exercises of girls are confined to competitions 
within their own school. 

The variety of uses to which a modern school- 
house can be put is illustrated by the activities of the 
Rochester Social Center No. Nine: "Besides being a 
day, an evening and a vacation school, and serving as 
a public club-house for men, women, boys and girls, 
the building is used as a moving-picture theater, lec- 
ture hall, gymnasium, a bath-house, a dance hall, a 
library and a playground house. A free dental clinic 
is to be established in it, and it has already become a 
public health office. Its yard is used as a playground 
and athletic field and a school garden." Nothing else 

186 



The Social Schools 



could apparently be suggested, unless it be a school 
savings bank. Such a school, as Mr. E. Stagg Whitin 
says, "duplicates the settlement in all but its personal 
work, and the church-house or parochial school in all 
but its distinctly religious work,' y and its ideal out- 
reach is to keep the motto central, "For all classes, of 
all ages, vitalizing the vocational aim, pointing toward 
the religious life of the church, providing the incen- 
tive which the occupations lack, and unifying the 
socialization of man as a member of the State and of 
the nation." In its relation to children such a school- 
house becomes a force of helpful influences in many 
ways. It stimulates the father, recreates the mother, 
and refines and improves the home. Physically, it 
affords the children examinations and clinics, baths and 
well-planned physical exercise and games. It brings 
them into peaceable social contact with others than 
their own gang, and it gives the gang a safe outlet. It 
offers to the child's nervous temperament a more in- 
teresting life than even that of the street, and stimu- 
lates him without exhaustion. Its clubs, manual train- 
ing and direct methods of instruction woo him toward 
the prosecution of his studies, and when he is once 
gathered into the night school it puts him in the 
way of a complete preparation for his vocation and 
for life. 

REFERENCES 

44 The Wider Use of the School Plant, "by Charles 
Arthur Perry. New York: The Charities Publication Com- 
mittee, 1910. 

187 



Betterment through Education 

44 The City School and the Rural School as a Commu- 
nity Center," in the Tenth Year Book of the National 
Society for the Scientific Study of Education, 1911. 



XVIII 

DEFECTIVE CHILDREN 

THE first and most necessary step in the care of 
mentally and morally defective children is to 
classify them so as to know how best to protect 
and nurture them. Dr. Fernald eight years ago esti- 
mated that there were one hundred and fifty thousand 
defectives in America, of which existing institutions 
were caring for only about eight thousand. This is an 
alarming and perilous situation, for, as Mrs. Anna Gar- 
lin Spencer says, "Feeble-mindedness uncared for and 
unprotected constitutes a supreme social danger. Men- 
tally defective boys * become town loafers and irrespon- 
sible pests;' feeble-minded girls 'are liable to become 
sources of unspeakable debauchery.' If this be so, 
nothing in the realm of charitable effort is more needed 
than a crusade to secure sufficient asylum homes, 
enough special schools, and proper care for all the 
feeble-minded of every degree, for every mentally de- 
fective boy and girl and man and woman that cannot 
properly safeguard, support and direct himself or her- 
self. If this be true, again it means that a large sum 
of money and much personal service is required for 
this task; and that certainly means that we should 
know of what divisions this general class of defectives 
consists. How many of this one hundred and fifty 
14 189 



Betterment through Education 

thousand are merely backward or slow children who 
can be brought up to average or nearly so by special 
teaching in the day schools? How many are physic- 
ally weak because of bad inheritance or malnutrition, 
or bad air in homes or too little sleep or some other 
unhealthful condition and only seem to be mentally 
defective because ill? How many of these must have 
* residential schools' for awhile in order to secure 
proper physical environment, and how many can be 
improved in their home surroundings by means of aid 
to the family? How many of this one hundred and 
fifty thousand are i mentally feeble,' to use the Eng- 
lish term, not 'lacking' but weak in mind? How 
many of these with special day-school help can remain 
in their homes and grow slowly to self-support and 
only need to lean on some stronger nature a little more 
heavily and constantly than most of us lean on one an- 
other? How large a proportion of this melancholy 
army of defectives are really imbecile, forever incapa- 
ble of even a small measure of self-direction, but able 
to become a quarter or third part self-supporting, or 
even more than that, under proper care? And last of 
all, how many are idiots, just breathing and living, 
but not capable of anything distinctively human?" 

Dr. Edward T. Devine calls attention to the fact 
that it is not only socially dangerous to let the imbecile 
"shift for himself," but that "it is socially extravagant 
and personally cruel to brand a child as feeble-minded 
who may be only half-starved of food or sleep or air, 
or only temporarily 'slow' from want of proper care or 
understanding of his peculiar educational needs." 

190 



Defective Children 



The schedule for the classification of deficients 
which has become recognized as standard is that fur- 
nished by Dr. Martin W. Barr in his "Mental Defec- 
tives." It is as follows: 



EDUCATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE FEEBLE- 
MINDED. 



IDIOT. 

f Apathetic ] 
Profound -J f- Unimprovable. 

[Excitable J 

f Apathetic } 
Superficial *j )■ Improvable in self-help only. 

[Excitable J 



Asylum Care. 



Custodian Life 
and Perpetual 
Guardian- 
ship. 



Long Appren- 
ticeship and 
Colony Life 
Under Protec- 
tion. 



Trained for a 
Place in the 
World 



IDIO-IMBECILE 

Improvable in self-help and helpfulness. 
Trainable in very limited degree to assist others. 

MORAL IMBECILE 

Mentally and morally deficient. 

Low Grade : Trainable in industrial occupations ; tem- 
perament bestial. 

Middle Grade : Trainable in industrial and manual oc- 
cupations; a plotter of mischief. 

High Grade: Trainable in manual and intellectual 
arts; with genius for evil. 

IMBECILE. 

Mentally deficient. 

Low Grade : Trainable in industrial and simplest man- 
ual occupations. 

Middle Grade : Trainable in manual arts and simplest 
mental acquirements. 

High Grade: Trainable in manual and intellectual 
arts. 

BACKWARD OR MENTALLY FEEBLE. 

Mental processes normal, but slow and requiring 
special training and environment to prevent dete- 
rioration; defect imminent under slightest provo- 
cation, such as excitement, overstimulation or 
illness. 



191 



Betterment through Education 

Basing his statements upon this classification, Dr. 
Alexander Johnson has described the modern treat- 
ment of defectives as follows. Of the low-grade idiot, 
first, he says: "As dependent for food and cleanliness 
as a baby, it is evident that unless he has parents able 
and willing to care for him, he can only be treated as 
our civilization demands he shall be, in a well-equipped 
asylum. The only room for difference of opinion as 
to the nature of that asylum is on the question of 
whether it should be entirely separated from other in- 
stitutions, or should be a part of a large whole, receiv- 
ing all, or most other classes. 

"The idio-imbecile, like the idiot, is a proper ob- 
ject of asylum care. The border line between classes 
is not a hard and fast one for the class, still less for the 
individual. Even in idiot asylums there is room for 
training. Although the idiot or the idio-imbecile may 
be a life-long object of a maternal care, yet it may not- 
withstanding be worth while to spend much time and 
effort, spread over many years, upon his training, since 
by so doing the burden of his care during the remain- 
der of his life, perhaps twenty or thirty years, may be 
greatly lessened and his own comfort infinitely in- 
creased. Sometimes in the apparent idiot may be 
wakened some little spark of intelligence, enough even 
to justify his advancement to a higher grade. We 
must always and in all grades be prepared for improve- 
ment and movement from one class to a higher, or the 
reverse. 

"The next class in Dr. Barr's schedule, the moral- 
imbecile, presents our most difficult problem. The 

192 



Defective Children 



problem, however, is not as to the nature of his care. 
For him, even more than for the idiot, care must be 
custodial and permanent. To this class belong the 
tragic cases which, happily infrequent, are so danger- 
ous to themselves and society if neglected. Monsters 
of erotic vice, and monsters of cruelty, like the boy 
Pomeroy, are not unknown in institutions for the 
feeble-minded, while those whose propensities for 
thieving and petty, spiteful trickery are seemingly 
ineradicable are quite common. There are no doubt 
many of this class confined in prisons. These are 
moral imbeciles who have not been recognized as such. 
Wholly irresponsible, not so much immoral as amoral, 
they are often physically strong and possessed of much 
native ability. The problem is how to control them 
so that their vicious tendencies may be curbed, while 
they may be induced to lead a useful and reasonably 
happy life. 

"For these, if for any, is the method of asexualiza- 
tion justifiable, although the fact that they are known 
to be dangerous if at large, makes their parents, as well 
as the authorities, content that their sequestration from 
society shall be permanent. The argument for the 
knife in their case is that relief from the urgency of the 
sex instinct frequently results in a decided weakening 
of other evil tendencies. 

"As Dr. Barr suggests, hard work and vigorous 
play constitute the most helpful conditions for the 
moral imbecile. The adjustment of all his cir- 
cumstances so that without undue severity his forces 
may be led into useful channels is to the heads of 

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Betterment through Education 

our training schools a constantly recurring prob- 
lem. 

"The next class, by far the largest, much larger 
indeed than the public usually believes, the true con- 
genital imbecile, is fortunately the easiest to deal with. 
Children always, from infancy to age, growing up to 
have the bodies and the passions of adults, but always 
immature in mind, they call for training and control. 
Grading insensibly from the idiot class and that of the 
moral-imbecile and differing among themselves more 
than normal children differ, the training they need 
must be largely individual. 

"With the feeble-minded as with all other classes, 
for the best results training must begin early in life. 
Those who have had these children in charge know 
that a large proportion of them may be trained to the 
point of complete self-support, another large propor- 
tion may be taught to do a great deal of useful labor. 
None of them is utterly void of usefulness. And 
with the loving sympathy they often receive they may 
all be made very happy. In fact cheerful, contented 
and happy lives are the rule rather than the exception 
in the well-ordered training schools for the feeble- 
minded which can now be seen in many states. 

"The advantage to the trained defective in belong- 
ing to the institution, instead of being driven out to a 
cold and unsympathizing world, is also very great. 
In the institution he must work, but he is not over- 
worked. Especially he does not have to decide for 
himself; no responsibility is thrown upon him. Out- 
side, in the world at large, his strength and ability 

194 



Defective Children 



cause people, while they want to pay him only boy's 
wages, to expect a man's work from him. In the in- 
stitution he is not asked for more than he can give. 
If he is sick he is cared for. If he misses it in his 
work, his employer makes allowances. Above all, he 
has companionship with his own kind, he is not looked 
down on nor despised by his associates. 

"The further advantage to the institution of the 
plan we have mentioned is that it offers the best possi- 
bility of proper classification." 

Socially, Dr. Barr finds that the idiot is capable of 
no more than offices of self-help, which nevertheless 
materially lessen the burden of his care. The low 
grade imbecile may be guided in the simple occupa- 
tions of farm or household, which, with his knitting 
and weaving, may contribute to his maintenance. The 
high grade imbecile may attain considerable proficiency 
in manual and intellectual arts, but still suffers from 
absolute defect which can never be wholly supplied or 
restored. The moral imbecile is tricky and untrust- 
worthy, capable sometimes of profuse professions and 
feelings but devoid of conscience. He may, accord- 
ing to his grade, be bestial, a plotter of mischief or 
possessed of a genius for evil. But the imbecile who is 
mentally rather than morally deficient, often possesses 
the parental instinct and may be entrusted with the 
care of children or of other incapables, showing some- 
times in cases of individuals toward whom custodians 
can feel nothing but repulsion a most touching affec- 
tion. These "unfinished infants" are therefore not 
unhappy, their activities are so intelligent that visitors 

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Betterment through Education 

cannot believe them to be feeble-minded and they 
cheerfully adapt themselves to the wisely provided 
instrumentalities of Nature, of whom they have been 
called "step-children." 

Modern eugenics and modern philanthropy and 
modern criminology unite in insisting upon the neces- 
sity of perpetual custodial care and protection of all 
these classes, so* that they may not perpetuate them- 
selves. Dr. Barr instituted an expensive questionnaire 
among heads of institutions for the feeble-minded, in 
which he asked what proportion of those under care 
were capable of procreation, and received answers 
agreeing that 80 per cent, were capable of reproducing 
their kind. Asking how many of any of these classes 
ought to be permitted to do this, the unanimous con- 
sensus was, Not one. How infinitely better then, as 
Dr. Johnson says, that "in the peaceful 'Village of the 
Simple^ ' as the lamented Kerlin phrased it, these men 
and women children should lead happy and harmless 
lives, having all that other villagers enjoy, except the 
excitements of popular elections and the joys and 
sorrows of married life. For in the colony they live 
like the angels in heaven, at least to the extent that 
they 'neither marry nor are given in marriage.' " 

There is still one more group in Dr. Barr's classify 
cation, the truly backward child, not imbecile, but 
with mental processes normal except in time. These 
children have often been stunted by neglect, abuse or 
semistarvation, and thus made to appear imbecile or 
even idiotic. Or they may have suffered from disease 
or fright or accident. Most such children as have 

196 






Defective Children 



had proper training have hitherto received it in public 
or private institutions, and the best and brightest 
graduates of such institutions who have done well 
were never feeble-minded at all. If such children 
have good homes, there is no doubt that their home 
training may be adequately supplemented by a special 
department of the public school. For such children 
the word "atypical" is being used, and Dr. Maximil- 
ian P. E. Groszmann has prepared a classification, 
supplemental to that of Dr. Barr, indicating the varied 
causes and results of such departure from normal. It 
is as follows: 

I. — Congenitally Abnormal Children (deviating from 
the standard of human nature): 
Idiots, feeble-minded, insane, criminals, and moral 
perverts. 

II. — Congenitally Defective Children: 
Epileptics, blind, deaf and dumb, etc. 

III. — Children of Arrested Development: 

(a) Submerged Classes. 

(£) Pathological Classes (born apparently normal, but 
having their development checked by): 
1 Hereditary causes, manifesting themselves at cer- 
tain developmental periods; 
2. Disease, fright, etc. 

IV. — Atypical Children Proper (deviating from the 

AVERAGE HUMAN TYPE) : 

{a) Neurotic ond Neurasthenic Children: 

Overstimulation and precosity. Irritability. Per- 
verse tendencies. Contrariness. Motor disturbances. 

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Betterment through Education 

Tic. Fears and obsessions. Vasomotor, sensory, 
and trophic disturbances. Defective inhibition. 

(£) Children of Retarded Development. 

(Dr. Barr's "Backward Children"): 

Physical causes: chronic catarrh, chronic difficulties 

of nutrition, serious visual and aural difficulties, etc. 

Impaired conceptional ability due to retarded brain 

development. 

V. — Pseudo- Atypical Children: 

(# ) Children Whose Progress in School was Hindered by 

1. Temporary illness; 

2. Change of schools; 

3. Slower rate of development; 

4. Physical difficulties such as lameness and deform- 
ity, slightly impaired hearing and vision, adenoid 
vegetations, etc. 

(/?) Children of Unusually Rapid Development, without 

genuine (pathological) precosity. 
(c) Children who are difficult of management, naughty, 

troublesome children. 

Three kinds of classes are proposed for atypical 
children, says Dr. Amos G. Warner: "training classes 
for the mentally deficient, coaching classes for the 
slightly backward, delicate or exceptional, and dis- 
ciplinary classes for the truant and disorderly." These 
exist in some cities, but the chief difficulty is that 
teachers are not adequately equipped for this work. 
"The normal mind has elasticity enough to withstand 
the evil effects of bad teaching," but not so the abnor- 
mal, Mr. E. R. Johnstone, in an appeal for "For- 

198 



Defective Children 



ward Teachers for Backward Children," has urged 
that all teachers, even of normal children, shall have 
some opportunity to observe atypical and abnormal 
children in institutions. Among the advantages 
which he claims for this first-hand knowledge are: an 
opportunity to study the strong and weak points of 
children as there exaggerated, a new view of discipline 
which makes for happiness, a reappraisement of the 
usefulness of many things taught in the public schools, 
a new interest in nature study and a new conception 
of the possibilities of child study. For the teacher 
who is to work specially with backward children he 
considers such visits and special summer school work 
at such institutions indispensable, in enabling such 
teachers to learn to distinguish and classify defects of 
the physical and mental faculties of those who shall 
come under her care. It is through such trained 
teachers that effective classification of atypical children 
will come to pass, the merely backward ones being 
brought forward into the ranks and the imbeciles and 
idiots discovered and segregated before they slip out 
into society to do harm to themselves and others. 

Medical examination of atypical children and even 
of those who fail in examinations is coming every- 
where, ungraded classes have been started successfully 
in cities of 25,000 and less, and in rural regions it is 
suggested that central schools be organized for back- 
ward children, the expense to be borne pro rata by the 
towns or paid out of county funds where that is 
feasible. 

Something has been said of the lessons that may 
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Betterment through Education 

come to the teacher of average children from the study 
of methods used in training those who are abnormal. 
The New Education itself is based, singularly enough, 
upon what has been learned in endeavoring to train 
abnormal rather than normal children. As the editor 
of The Survey has said, "From those who wrought in 
the darkness of the blind child and in the silence of 
the deaf child have come light and voices to make the 
way plainer for the teacher of the usual. Years before 
the era of the kindergarten and what has been called 
the 'new education/ methods of training were found 
necessary for the feeble-minded radically different 
from those customary for normal children — object 
teaching, nature study, sense-training, manual train- 
ing, directed games, etc." 

"The church of the divine fragments," as some- 
one has called the institutions for the defective, has 
become the benefactor of all childhood. It has shown 
us how to train the main and accessory muscles 
through play and manual training and has convinced 
us that through the hand we have more acceptable 
ways of educating the memory, observation, attention, 
will, reason and judgment than through books. 

Space is not granted to give special mention of in- 
stitutions for epileptics and the insane or of institu- 
tions for the deaf, the dumb and the blind. The pub- 
lic has become aware of the miracles that have been 
wrought among children afflicted with sense defects, by 
the heroology of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, the Chevalier 
Bayard of those who sat in darkness, of whose contri- 
butions to education it has been said, "He never 

200 



Defective Children 



planted a dead seed/' and by the bourgeoning life of 
Helen Keller. 

The most recent objects of public attention and 
care are crippled children. These young people, as 
mentally alert as others but bound in chains because 
unable to get access to the schools, are beginning to be 
remembered. In some cities those who can endure 
the strain are being carried to and from the public 
schools at public expense. For those more sorely 
afflicted small institutions giving medical and nursing 
care and such schooling as they can receive are begin- 
ning to spring up, but the weakness of most of them is 
that they are obliged to dismiss their inmates just upon 
the threshold of their preparation for self-support. 

No pages of human history shine with a brighter 
tenderness than those in which are recounted the en- 
deavors of man to obey the Master's mandate to 
"gather up the fragments that nothing may be lost." 
And to none should be extended a more practical sym- 
pathy than the children who, accepting the hands that 
have been reached toward them for help, have strug- 
gled under the burden or hereditary or physical bond- 
age toward the best manhood possible to them. Mrs. 
Spencer has a poem, entitled "The Conquerors," in 
which after describing the advent of a strong, chival- 
rous hero, she describes the appearance of "another 
conqueror:" 

Amazed, the throng looked backward, and with scorn 
Made answer: "He a King? He shames the Dawn! 
To call him here with us would clog our way. 
See'st thou his sullen look of dull dismay? 
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Betterment through Education 

His weak, uncertain feet? His clumsy hand? 
His loathsome scars of ancient evil's brand? 
Demons escaped and beasts but half outgrown 
Still haunt his twilight mind. Timid, alone, 
Vast Nature's step-child, prey of cruel fate, 
He — King? O Love, thy wisdom fails of late!" 

But Love replied, more sternly sweet, " Behold, 

They both are Conquerors! He, so calmly bold, 

Who leads your march, ye well may crown him here; 

I told you he was King while far or near 

His solemn call scarce heeded rang. But he, 

So far behind, from Life's deep pulsing sea 

I saw him snatch, when cast to earth, one gleam 

Of yearning hope; but one faint, fitful beam 

O'er which heaven's light might pass to his pale soul 

To stir its life and make it grow. The whole 

Round world in league with me I held to aid 

His secret struggle; till, at last, afraid, 

Yet wrestling still, he strained half way from beast 

To man! And now, O see, erect at least, 

He stumbles onward toward the path ye tread! 

Ah, look again; he lifts his heavy head! 

Conqueror, I say, of his poor self the King, 

Forget him not when triumph songs ye sing!" 

REFERENCES 

The best book on this subject is "Mental Defectives: 
Their History, Treatment, and Training," by Martin W. 
Barr. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son and Co., 1904. 

"Laggards in Our Schools," by Leonard P. Ayres, 
New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1909, is the 
study of this special subject recently made under the 
auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation. 

202 



XIX 

PLAY AND PLAYGROUNDS 

WE used to say that the play of children was 
merely fooling. It was looked upon indul- 
gently as an evidence of their lack of wisdom. 
We have come to see that, far from this being the case, 
children exist chiefly that they may play. 

We have for some time realized that play is essen- 
tial for the health of children. The antidotes to tu- 
berculosis are air and sunlight, and it is play that 
drives children out of doors. It is becoming an axiom 
that all children need the country, and play is the 
child's instinct to secure or imitate rural conditions for 
himself. We are now understanding that play instead 
of being fooling is both the expression and furnishes 
the interpretation of the instincts of childhood. 
Through play the child learns to control his mental 
faculties. In play he develops and uses his will. The 
secret of human power is play. Play is the child's 
practice school for his future conduct. In it he gath- 
ers initiative, meets emergencies and tastes the com- 
plexities of real life. "The glorious thing about life," 
says Dr. Luther H. Gulick, "is that the great work is 
play. ,? The wars, the heroisms, the discoveries, the 
constructions, the serving of the world, have all been 
engaged in by mature men in the play spirit. The 

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Betterment through Education 

child in play pursues the ideal, and we who are older 
seldom pursue our ideals except in the spirit of play. 

Play is not only individual but also social. Mr. 
Joseph Lee has divided the periods of child play in 
order of age, into the dramatic, the self-assertive and 
the loyal. The dramatic play of the young child is 
largely solitary. The self-assertive play of the grow- 
ing boy or girl represents the period when he plays 
somewhat quarrelsomely with others. The loyal 
period is that of the athletics of the high school and of 
the college. These advancing periods of increasing 
sociability are the stages in the child's own social edu- 
cation of himself. He is learning to take the view- 
point of another, to find co-operation possible, and to 
discern the importance of the group over the individ- 
ual. In his games he is discovering the possibility of 
self-sacrifice and is evolving a mutual-consent govern- 
ment which prepares him for his relations to society. 
"To the boy playing football this losing himself in 
common purpose is not a matter of self-sacrifice," says 
Joseph Lee, "but of self-fulfillment." 

With all these impressive values, unregulated play 
has its equally obvious dangers. The ideals which 
the child pursues may be unworthy or criminal. The 
unsupervised crowd becomes a gang, which may be 
bent upon predatory or hostile purposes. The influ- 
ence of an unscrupulous adult leader may cause the 
group to become a school of vice or immorality. 

These two considerations — the great educative pos- 
sibilities of play and the moral dangers of unsupervised 
play, have given rise to the playground movement. 

204 



Play and Playgrounds 



The purposes of the playground movement have 
been definitely stated by Dr. H. S. Curtis as fol- 
lows: 

"First: The promotion of the physical health of 
children through keeping them in the open air, and 
giving them increased power of vital resistance through 
physical exercise. 

"Second: The development of physical strength. 
The work of the modern city child has disappeared. 
The physical training received in the school, seldom 
amounting to more than ten or fifteen minutes a day, 
is a negligible quantity. Practically the only method 
of training left is play. 

"Third: The development of vital or organic 
strength. Nearly all games use old and simple co-or- 
dinations and the fundamental muscles, nearly all of 
them involve running and so tend to strengthen the 
heart, lungs and stomach. Vital or organic strength 
is far more essential to modern life than muscular 
strength. 

"Fourth: The establishment of right habits. 
Children form their habits of courtesy or discourtesy, 
of kindness or unkindness, of fairness or unfairness, of 
honesty or dishonesty, primarily in play. All play, 
being a form of social conduct, is either moral or im- 
moral, and offers the same opportunity for the devel- 
opment of right habits and principles that life itself 
offers. Further, if we accept with Mr. Royce the 
tenet that loyalty is the fundamental concept of moral- 
ity, then we must regard play also as fundamental. 
All team games approximate the conditions of the 
15 205 



Betterment through Education 

tribal life, in which loyalty was born into the race, and 
gained an intensity which it has never had since. 

" Fifth: The development of energy and enthusi- 
asms. The boy cannot only run faster in playing tag 
than in going on an errand, but throughout the entire 
range of his play life he develops a far larger amount 
of activity than it is possible for him to do in work. 
In other words, if we wish a vigorous manhood we 
must secure a vigorous childhood, and play is the only 
key to the situation. 

" Sixth: Pleasure. Through play the child devel- 
ops a sense of the joy of life and gains a bent toward 
optimism. The moral value of this unifying experi- 
ence of play, in which the consciousness of self is sunk 
in absorbing interest and common things are suffused 
with unifying feeling, is not to be lightly estimated." 

To this may be added Dr. Luther H. Gulick's re- 
mark that "If the purpose of education be complete 
equipment for life, we must equip for work, and we 
must also equip for play." 

In the provision for and the regulation of play we 
are notably behind other countries. We lack the pub- 
lic festivals, the music houses and the public gardens 
of Germany. We do not have the lively village 
squares of Italy. We have only just begun, as Mr. 
George E. Johnson, one of our playground experts, 
has pointed out, to "begin to catch up with Athens." 
The first public parks in America were lawns for the 
display of flowers, and the motto "Keep off the grass" 
represented the depth of our ignorance and intolerance. 
Since the year 1872, when the enlightened town of 

206 



Play and Playgrounds 



Brookline, Mass., opened the first American play- 
ground, our progress has been rapid and continuous. 
This chapter will endeavor to exhibit the variety 
rather than the history of playground development. 

The simplest opportunities of play are represented 
by the street and the vacant lot. In our metropolis 
some crowded streets are being practically closed to 
wagons in order that little children may be undisturbed 
in their play. The use of vacant lots by children is 
being asked from their owners by social workers, al- 
though it is being realized that except as they relieve 
the pressure upon a crowded street, unregulated play 
tends to mean the control of the lot by big "bullies" 
or by muscular gangs. 

The next logical step was the opening of play- 
grounds in the slums. This has been done in New 
York City at great expense by tearing down rookeries 
and opening the space thus secured to the children. 
This has meant not only the improvement of child 
health in the whole region, but it has proven a profit- 
able form of social insurance. It is estimated that the 
opening of playgrounds in the crowded sections les- 
sens the number of juvenile convictions for crime the 
first year at least 2 5 per cent. There must also be and 
there is beginning to be what Dr. Gulick calls "the 
aggressive adaptation of parks." He points out that 
the library pushes its books and the gallery its pictures, 
but the park does not act as if it knew what it was for. 
The playground movement shows. Joseph Lee has 
the phrase "play as landscape," and easily shows that 
children playing on a lawn are more beautiful as scen- 

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Betterment through Education 

ery even than flowers. Churches are sometimes able 
to conduct or provide play space, at least for little 
children. And the latest thing is the endowed play- 
ground, a beautiful kind of memorial. 

School grounds are now being utilized for play 
after school hours, and our enlightened cities are pass- 
ing ordinances that no new school shall be built with- 
out a playground. In the large cities the roofs of the 
new schools are also used for the same purpose. 
School playgrounds are described in the chapter on 
"The Social School.' ' 

Cities with river fronts are building recreation 
piers, sometimes of two stories, one of which is used 
by mothers of young children, and the other by older 
boys and girls. A great deal of condensed pleasure 
and profit may be obtained by open-air gymnasiums, 
such as that beside the Charles River in Boston. 
This, of course, cannot be used for field games. The 
city of Chicago has excited the admiration of the world 
by its civic centers, of which there is now a chain on 
the South Side. These centers comprise a small park 
containing a finely equipped field house. The park 
has its corner for little children, its reserved space for 
growing boys and girls, and its campus for baseball 
and football. The field is flooded in winter for skat- 
ing. The field house carries the play spirit through 
the winter. It contains a large assembly hall where 
entertainments and dancing parties are given. The 
boys' gymnasium, the girls' gymnasium, the branch 
of the public library and club-rooms are used by adults 
as well as by children. There is both an indoor and 

208 



Play and Playgrounds 



an outdoor pool. Closely associated with the play- 
ground is the public bath- and wash-house. It is sur- 
prising to learn that even in supposedly clean cities 
only 5 to 25 per cent, of the population have access to 
bath tubs. The city of Boston has been a leader in 
this direction. The L Street beach is so secluded 
that men and boys may bathe there nude. The floating 
bath-houses in the Charles River have enclosed shel- 
ters containing pools both for men and for women, 
while the great Crescent Beach reservation has not only 
its magnificent bathing beach, but is also Boston's 
"Coney Island." 

"Play," as Mr. Graham Romeyn Taylor observes, 
"has overflowed the playground. We have thought 
that the thing to do was to scoop up all the play that 
was lying around loose in the city's streets and pour it 
off into 'playgrounds' with supervisors to stir it. But 
now we see that this is only a small part of the ocean." 

Mr. Lee in his admirable monograph on "Play 
and Playgrounds" has enumerated what a playground 
ought to contain. For children under six there must 
be "workable material" (sand, etc.), "things" (to stir 
it with, etc.), opportunity for dramatic play of the 
imagination, and sociability. For the "big injun" 
stage, up to eleven, there must be reality, mischief and 
discipline, outings, "country in town," nature teach- 
ing, experimentation, animal care, gardens, sloyd,work, 
contest, quiet games, with apparatus and instructors for 
the same. For the age of loyalty beyond there must 
be the great outdoor group games, played in the gang 
spirit. 

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Betterment through Education 

It is a new thought that play requires to be super- 
vised, but the unsupervised playground means the sur- 
vival of the toughest. In the older thought supervi- 
sion took the zest out of play, but there is a difference 
between supervised play and "bossed" play. Where 
multitudes of children gather it is necessary for peace 
that they should be graded and guided. The play of 
children may be absolutely free and yet be drawn 
toward efficiency for work and self-helpfulness. As 
the platform of the Parks and Playgrounds Association 
of New York City states, "To make free play uncon- 
sciously purposeful the player should be beguiled 
toward work, and the worker beguiled toward play, 
that play and work may be naturally reactive and both 
make for greater efficiency and happiness in life." 
The vocation of playground director is therefore 
becoming an ^established and trained profession. Its 
opportunities for giving physical direction, personal 
guidance and securing "occupied peace" on the play- 
ground are large and inspiring. In Chicago social 
workers have also been assigned to the playgrounds to 
study and help the situations which develop there. 
The goal of the modern playground movement is "to 
encourage clubs, societies, associations, churches, insti- 
tutions, adults, department stores, factories, neighbor- 
hood communities and individuals to provide and 
equip the necessary places for recreation." No city is 
adequately organized unless there are suitable places for 
the play of all the children, not more than a quarter of 
a mile from each other. Sympathy has suggested the 
provision of play opportunities for little children, but 

210 



Play and Playgrounds 



we are now beginning to see that the physical and 
moral needs of employed boys and girls are even 
greater, and the new playgrounds are becoming more 
spacious for their sakes, while the use of arc lights in 
the old playgrounds and the opening of recreation 
piers and field houses manifest our recognition of 
them. ' ' The play movement, ' ' says Curtis, ' ' is swing- 
ing strongly toward general recreation. The focus is 
shifting from the child to the people, from the public 
playground to public recreation." 

REFERENCES 

"Education by Plays and Games," by George Ellsworth 
Johnson, Boston,, Ginn and Co., 1907, discusses the mean- 
ing of play and its place in education and gives an educa- 
tive course of plays and games. 

"Play arid Playgrounds," by Joseph Lee, New York, 
American Playground Association, 1910, is a little pam- 
phlet which contains all most people need to know about 
its subject. 

"Playground Technique and Playcraf t, " edited by 
Arthur and Lorna Higbee Leland, Springfield, The F. A. 
Bassett Company, 1909, is a text-book of playground phil- 
osophy, architecture, construction and equipment. 

"The Play of Man," by Karl Groos. New York: D. 
Appleton and Co., 1901. The standard book on the evolu- 
tionary significance of play. 



XX 

CLUBS FOR STREET BOYS 

THERE are over one hundred and fifty clubs in 
American cities, furnishing evening recreation 
and instructions for boys exposed to the dan- 
gers of the street, each having a membership of from 
one hundred to over two thousand. They probably 
reach over a hundred thousand boys annually. Their 
most important work has been so quietly done that it 
is not very well known. The first club distinctly for 
street boys seems to have been the " Salem Fraternity," 
organized in Salem, Mass., in 1869. In 1887 an as- 
sociation of evangelistic workers organized a depart- 
ment of work for boys, and as a result as many as six- 
teen such clubs were formed in Massachusetts and 
Connecticut. Five years later this organization came 
to an end, but such clubs have sprung up sporadically 
ever since. An organization called "The General 
Alliance of Workers for Boys," was started in 1895, 
which associated many of the club superintendents, 
but it was not until 1905 that workers with street boys 
formed an organization of their own, which is now 
known as "The Federated Boys' Clubs." 

These clubs have their place in the densely popu- 
lated portion of large cities. Wherever the churches 
move out and the saloons move in, there we find the 

212 



Clubs for Street Boys 



boys in danger, and there the street boys' club is nec- 
essary. It is a refuge from the street, a change of 
scene from the excitements and privations of their own 
lives, and a substitute for the uncomfortable or home- 
less home. The boys who are reached are of the in- 
dustrial class, including a large percentage of for- 
eigners, and such clubs are apt to gather more Roman 
Catholics and Jews than Protestants. 

It has usually been some graphic manifestation of 
a serious local need which has called such clubs into 
being. Sometimes they have had from the start a 
strong body of philanthropic directors, but more of- 
ten they have been organized by one individual who 
has felt the needs of such boys as a burden upon his 
heart. Sometimes such a man has financed the enter- 
prise in whole or in part; sometimes he has been the 
active worker and has suffered heroic privations before 
he has been able to attract the interest and support of 
philanthropic citizens. In a few instances these clubs 
have been the outgrowth of the interest and support of 
city newspapers. 

The first step in organizing has generally been to 
get possession of some empty store or warehouse and 
to hire a superintendent. As there is no school for 
the special training of such men, they have been re- 
cruited from various walks of life. The best superin- 
tendents, no doubt, are educated men, either from the 
teaching profession or from the ranks of the Y. M. C. 
A. secretaries. The early work of the superintendent 
is to be a kind of moral policeman. He sees that -the 
boys have clean faces and hands before they enter the 

213 



Betterment through Education 

club-room. He secures table games, bookstand mag- 
azines for those of quieter dispositions, and if he is 
competent, leads the whole club in calisthenics and 
athletic exercises. 

As the club prospers it secures quarters in which 
there are smaller rooms for clubs and classes. Two of 
these clubs, which are most instructive because they 
have started from small beginnings and have put up 
with modest equipment and have developed a fine or- 
ganization, are "The Good Will Boys' Club" of 
Hartford, Conn., and "The Bunker Hill Boys' Club 
of Charlestown, " in Boston. 

A street boys' club is, after all, a kind of school, 
and the process of grading is somewhat as follows: 
The boys enter first into a large game-room or gym- 
nasium, and after they have wreaked their superfluous 
energy they are ready to be introduced into the smaller 
clubs and classes. The age of the members of such 
clubs usually runs from eight to sixteen years, and the 
games are graded according to the requirements of these 
various periods. Floor games, as parlor quoits, ring 
toss, ping-pong and bowling, and all the old-fashioned 
table games are perennially popular. Military drill, 
basket-ball, indoor baseball and calisthenics are the 
chief activities of the gymnasium. The introduction 
of the boy into the club or class-room means that he is 
beginning to be dealt with not in the mass but as an 
individual. One of these smaller rooms is a reading- 
room and library. In this room he finds usually a 
volunteer worker, probably a woman, who directs him 
in his reading and possibly conducts a story-hour, 

214 



Clubs for Street Boys 



which is itself an introduction to books. In the class- 
rooms the popular subjects are basketry, poster work, 
water coloring, magazine prints, clay modeling, py- 
rography, raphia work, and work in bent iron and 
wood. For the special purposes of this kind of club, 
work in carpentry is much better than sloyd, because it 
enables the boy to take home a product which shall be 
an adornment or of use to his household. The print- 
ing class is valuable because it teaches spelling, punc- 
tuation and composition. Electrical work is popular, 
but interesting though it is in itself, it requires, more 
than the other subjects, technical knowledge, expen- 
sive books and mechanical drawing, if any but the 
most elementary progress is to be secured. Some sim- 
ple form of business training, conducted as a play busi- 
ness house, in which, with artificial money and trans- 
actions, the boys may learn the nature of a check and 
a note, a little book-keeping and something of simple 
business practice and business law is desirable. Other 
useful subjects of instruction are cobbling, free-hand 
drawing, band music and sign lettering. 

A very popular club is the dramatic club, where 
the boys practice stage monologues, step-dancing, 
club swinging, solo singing and short plays. Among 
Jewish boys the debating club is a perpetual source of 
instruction. City history clubs are informing and 
helpful to civic pride. Almost all these clubs have a 
savings department, usually by means of the stamp 
savings system. The younger clubs are controlled by 
the autocracy of the adult leader, but as the boys grow 
older they are likely to organize self-governing clubs, 

215 



Betterment through Education 



in which there is opportunity for parliamentary prac- 
tice. In order to retain the interest of the oldest 
boys, who are in great danger of drifting back to the 
street and its temptations, special rooms are often re- 
served for a kind of graduate organization, which be- 
comes a sort of Senate, with some power of supervision 
and guidance of those who are younger. In the great 
Fall River Boys' Club this graduate organization has 
acquired a club-house which is larger and more com- 
plete than the club building itself, and presents the 
unique feature of a men's club as an annex to the 
boys' club. This tendency is most wholesome, for a 
club which protects the little boy and exhausts his in- 
terest and then precipitates him out into an unwhole- 
some environment has signally failed of real results. 

The club-houses are usually open after school for 
reading and quiet play, but their busy hours are be- 
tween seven and ten o'clock every evening, from Sep- 
tember until June. 

Boys are made members upon application, usually 
receiving in return a membership card, good for one 
month, for which they pay five cents. The accom- 
panying blank, when filled out, contains much infor- 
mation which is useful for the friendly visitor, and as 
the card may be withdrawn because of misconduct, it 
is itself an important aid toward club discipline. 

A popular feature in many clubs is a weekly mass 
meeting. This is quite apt to occur on Sunday after- 
noons. Two typical Sunday meetings are those of the 
Toledo and Detroit Newsboys' Associations. At these 
meetings, which are attended by hundreds of boys, 

216 



Clubs for Street Boys 



and in Toledo by girls who are segregated upon the 
front seats, and by interested visitors, the superinten- 
dent presides. The boys provide half an hour of en- 
tertainment of a vaudeville character, with some chorus 
singing, and the hour closes with a short address by a 
business man or a minister, rabbi or priest. These 
mass meetings certainly produce an esprit de corps, and 
make a spectacular exhibition of the club. They are 
believed by those who conduct them to have a whole- 
some effect upon the boys, partly because of their own 
voluntary participation, and partly because of the good 
which is done by the speakers who succeed in interest- 
ing the boys. The dangers of such an exhibition of 
juvenile talent are obvious, and some club leaders 
think it better to hold such a meeting on Saturday 
evening, when it forms an antidote to the cheap thea- 
ter. There is some danger that the more carefully 
boys are trained for such occasions the more likely 
they will be to become infatuated with the theater as a 
life vocation. 

All large clubs which are successfully conducted 
nowadays require a salaried superintendent, and the 
best clubs have also a friendly visitor, who may per- 
haps add to this function the clerical work of the or- 
ganization. The intimate knowledge of home condi- 
tions and of the boys' characters, with the resulting 
sympathy, which comes from such work makes this 
visitor the most important single individual in the 
club's life. The gymnasium and the classes are likely 
to be led by young college men, who are paid by the 
hour, while the informal clubs are guided by volun- 

217 



Betterment through Education 

teer workers. The Good Will Club usually has a 
staff of at least seventy such volunteers. The devel- 
opment of volunteer service is perhaps the most impor- 
tant thing in club work which affects the development 
of character. The more trusty boys are often em- 
ployed for small sums, to take charge of the check- 
room, the games, and to do some of the janitor service. 

There is a tendency among street boys to enter 
clubs and classes by gangs, and this tendency is usually 
encouraged, although in the Columbia Park Boys' 
Club of San Francisco, exactly the opposite course is 
pursued, and every group is broken up after it has 
worked together for one winter. The reason for the 
encouragement of the gang is to develop the friend- 
ships which are involved for better uses. The argu- 
ment employed for breaking up the gang is that doing 
so helps develop the individual and encourages club 
spirit. 

When the warm weather comes and the club-house 
ceases to be an attraction, the best clubs start to do 
their summer work. Among some clubs this consists 
of a camp, offering to different groups of boys a week's 
outing, but in clubs where a camp is not practicable, 
hiking trips, outings to the parks and co-operation 
with the fresh-air agencies become somewhat of a 
substitute. 

This description of these clubs applies not only to 
those which are conducted by boards of directors for 
this single purpose, but also largely to the clubs which 
are associated with social settlements. The social set- 
tlement clubs, however, are usually smaller, and are 

218 



Clubs for Street Boys 



sometimes unable, because of lack of large assembly 
rooms, to emphasize the esprit de corps as much as the 
"mass" clubs do. On the other hand, they do better 
work with the individual. Their classes are more 
thoroughly educational, and they have the advantage 
of correlating with clubs in which the parents and sis- 
ters of the boys are present. Lincoln House in Bos- 
ton, for example, started as a club for boys, and is now 
a social organization for all members of the family. 
This is the tendency of all this work. The worker 
starts with the boy and finds that he cannot do all that 
he would for the boy without influencing the girl, the 
mother, the father and the home. Such work has been 
criticised as tending to break up what little home life 
the boys possess. If the boys possess an adequate 
home life they do not need the club, and the superin- 
tendent who is not working for figures should find 
some way of keeping such boys out of the club. On 
the other hand, the homeless boy, the street waif, the 
newsboy, the poor boy who is working and who craves 
excitement when evening comes, the boy whose home 
is immoral or crowded or otherwise uncomfortable, 
and the boy who is already being tempted by the street 
— all these need such an organization as this. 

It is being recognized that the chief influence of 
the social settlement upon family life is through the 
younger members. Mr. Robert A. Woods of South 
End House, Boston, directly says this, and continues, 
to show how: 

"The boys and girls of immigrant families seek 
higher grades of occupations than their parents, higher 

219 



Betterment through Education 

remuneration. Higher hygienic standards are set up, 
and in some instances higher moral standards. This 
may not be true of all nationalities, but it is certainly 
true of some. I have known many boys to have 
greater aversion to the saloon than their fathers — not 
in the sense of being total abstainers, but in the sense 
of feeling that they were socially above that sort of re- 
sort. Very often this little social snobbishness repre- 
sents social self-respect, out of which may come a real 
advance. Dr. Blaustein has told of the dangers of 
reaching the family too largely through the children. 
Yet this alienation is part of the tragedy of American 
life. It is true of the farm as well as of the city. 
Each generation finds a larger opportunity and by that 
very fact is to a degree separated in sympathy from the 
parents. Through the kindergarten many of the 
younger mothers are reached. The younger fathers 
take an interest in the training of their boys for life 
work. So far as the settlement takes a hand in politics 
it comes into touch with the men, and as time goes on 
it can do so even more through securing employment. 
And by this I mean not merely waiting until the less 
efficient get out of work and then scaring up some- 
thing for them, but taking an interest in those more 
efficient — finding a better opportunity for the bright 
boy or girl than he could find alone — just as a re- 
sourceful parent would. By this the settlement is 
contributing to the vital forces of society." 

The boy's club is a philanthropy which works 
toward its own extinction. As the boys' club drives 
out the saloons, it becomes less necessary, and either 
• 220 



Clubs for Street Boys 



reaches to a farther distance to gather its boys or opens 
branches in more needy quarters, or moves bodily. 
As the public-school buildings are socialized and are 
open nights for play and learn to popularize more 
thoroughly their classes, they tend to take the place of 
the street boys' club. The public library and reading- 
room, which is near the club and which has an attrac- 
tively conducted children's room, tends to make the 
club less necessary afternoons, and to take its place for 
the more scholarly boys in the evening. City ordi- 
nances which raise the age limit of newsboys and re- 
move them from the streets nights, and regulations for 
licensing newsboys and supervising their work lessen 
the number of boys who need the influence of the 
club. In some cities the Y. M. C. A. has succeeded 
in making its advantages so inexpensive and so attrac- 
tive that the sons of workingmen avail themselves of 
them. If the Y. M. C. A. would enter into this work 
for street boys with the same energy and wisdom which 
it has shown in dealing with the sons of those who are 
doing professional and clerical work, it would give the 
whole work a national character and general supervi- 
sion, which it very much needs. There is at present, 
however, in most cities, a complete disinclination on 
the part of the sons of workingmen to enter the Y. M. 
C. A. building, and the Roman Catholic and Jewish 
prejudice against that institution also tends to leave a 
large place for the completely non-sectarian club. So 
enormous is the juvenile problem of our great cities 
that these clubs evidently must have for many years a 
large and useful place, for which there is no substitute. 
16 221 



Betterment through Education 



REFERENCES 

There is no adequate text-book of American clubs for 
street boys. The best we have on the subject are: 

"Boys of the Street: How to Win Them, " by Charles 
Stelzle. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1904. 

"Waifs of the Slum and Their Way Out, " by Leonard 
Benedict. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1907. 

"Working Lads' Clubs, ,? by Charles E. B. Russell and 
Lillian M. Rigby. London: Macmillan and Co., 1908. 
An excellent text-book of English clubs. 



XXI 

CAMPS AND OUTINGS 

WHILE the sharp contrasts between the inclem- 
ent winters and the sultry summers of the 
northern states of America make necessary a 
more radical change in the habits of our people than 
in England and other countries where the climate is 
more equable, yet the vacation and the outing habit in 
America may be said to be of somewhat recent origin. 
The idea of a vacation for the vacation's sake, and es- 
pecially the conception of its educational value to chil- 
dren, is scarcely more than a generation old in this 
country. The serious-minded American at first [de- 
manded the excuse of moral or physical interest before 
he ventured upon a summer holiday. Saratoga was 
popular in the early years of the nineteenth century, 
because the excuse of the mineral waters brought to- 
gether hundreds of New Englanders and New York- 
ers, who really needed a good time. The Methodist 
camp meeting with its daily religious sessions was an- 
other illustration of the same sort, and our modern 
camp movement may perhaps be distinctly traced to 
this source. The camp meeting to-day has largely 
passed over into the Chautauqua, and often upon the 
same grounds where protracted revival meetings were 
held, there are all kinds of athletic sports, gymnastic 

223 



Betterment through Education 

and manual training, and a concerted effort to make 
the season definitely profitable to boys and girls, to- 
gether with the simplicity and wholesomeness of fam- 
ily life in cottages. At the mother Chautauqua in 
New York State, for example, boys and girls of all 
ages have a large section of the grounds to themselves, 
with special athletics, gymnasiums and arts and crafts 
buildings, leaders and teachers trained for the purpose, 
and a valuable and entrancing program of alternate 
work and play, which fills the entire summer vaca- 
tion. 

The family camp is the simplest development of 
the new belief in the wholesomeness of out-of-door 
life. It ranges from the elaborately furnished summer 
home at Lenox or Newport, miscalled a "cottage," to 
shelters built out of packing-boxes, which used to line 
the shore at Crescent Beach near Boston. So much 
more wholesome is a summer life in which the house- 
hold is kept together, even for a poor family, than 
the disguised charity of "country week," when chil- 
dren are sent away from their parents, that it is strange 
philanthropy has not made more easily possible the 
utilization of unoccupied properties on beaches and 
ponds near our great cities. 

Our churches have an opportunity of affording 
wholesome summers to their young people, of which 
they are beginning to take advantage. A church camp 
has the advantage of bringing together groups of boys 
or girls who are of similar age and who already know 
each other and can usually secure both the small 
amount of money and competent volunteer leaders for 

224 



Camps and Outings 



the conduct of such outings. The author has on more 
than half a dozen different occasions conducted such 
camps, numbering from a dozen to thirty boys. By 
borrowing tents and boats, the total expense has some- 
times been kept down to not more than two dollars a 
week for each individual. By finding a location near 
the city, and yet somewhat retired, and not far from 
the milkman, the baker and the fruiterer, it is possible 
to carry on such a camp without a professional cook. 
The boys are usually divided into squads who, in turn, 
prepare and serve the food, take care of the tents and 
grounds, arrange for the games and swimming and do 
the errands. It is a good idea to invite the mothers 
down about the third day, when they will appear in 
large numbers, bringing much-appreciated home cook- 
ing. The fathers will often, in turn, spend the night 
with their sons, and a splendid climax to such a whole- 
some week is a church picnic of all the friends of the 
campers. The leaders of such camps find that they 
can secure a knowledge of and influence over boys or 
girls in a few days under tents more intimate and help- 
ful than they can possibly secure in an entire winter's 
season of Sunday-school instruction. The groups thus 
amalgamated together become the nucleus of loyal 
boys' and girls' clubs for the winter season, and the 
co-operation of the parents tends to increase that close 
fellowship between parents and children which it is so 
desirable to encourage. 

The city of Boston had an experiment a dozen 
years ago in a municipal camp, utilizing an island be- 
longing to the city, and at a small expenditure of city 

225 



Betterment through Education 

money encouraging school-teachers to take charge of 
it. The results were most happy, but it has not been 
generally possible to persuade our city rulers that this 
is a proper use of educational or municipal funds, and 
the playground and school garden movement have 
since that time risen up in place of the city camp. 

The Young Men's Christian Association regards 
these camps, conducted either under state or city aus- 
pices, as the most fruitful part of its work for boys. 
The Young Women's Associations have many sum- 
mer rest cottages, which are only for working girls, 
and are usually conducted in rather more permanent 
shelters than the corresponding camps for boys. The 
state camps of the Y. M. C. A. bring together boys 
from different counties and different circumstances in 
one great united fellowship. The leaders are secre- 
taries and young college men, well trained in athletic 
lines and thoroughly appreciating the moral possibili- 
ties of this work. The wholesomeness of life on and 
in the water, close to the earth, and under the open 
sky, is here distinctly brought to a focus in the camp- 
fire talks, the Sunday meetings and the personal inti- 
macy between boys and leaders. The results worked 
for and usually secured are that there are a great many 
decisions by the boys in every such camp to live the 
religious life, and a more distinct and intelligent con- 
secration on the part of many, who are already con- 
verted, to a life of service among their fellows, upon 
their return to their homes. This latter feature is es- 
pecially emphasized in the summer conferences at Lake 
George and Lake Geneva, etc., where selected boys, 

226 



Camps and Outings 



living together under camp conditions, are definitely 
trained for religious service. 

It has become apparent that a camp is just as help- 
ful to a rich man's son as to the son of a poor man, 
and while the churches and social settlements are tak- 
ing care of the poor boy and the Y. M. C. A. of the 
middle class boy, there has arisen all over the country, 
but especially in the White Mountain region, a chain 
of camps, conducted usually by masters of private 
schools, where the fees for the summer are from $150 
to $300. Such a camp for girls was established by 
Mrs. Isabelle C. Barrows thirty-five years ago, and 
"Camp Asquam" for boys began not much later. 

The essentials for a good camp, as enumerated by 
Mr. E. M. Robinson, International Secretary of the 
Y. M. C. A. for boys' work, are as follows: 

1. Good water for drinking, cooking, and washing. 

2. A body of water for fishing, boating, swimming, bath- 

ing and going about. 

3. A wooded tract for roaming, hunting, for shade, for 

wood construction. 

4. An open field for games and sun dryings. 

5. Sleeping accommodations: tents, a log cabin, de- 

serted house, under a boat. 

6. Good drainage for tents, for sanitary purposes. 

7. Good outlook, scenery. 

8. Seclusion which allows a free dress and manner of 

living. 

9. An agreeable personnel. 

10. Discipline, allotment of labor and privilege, freedom.. 

11. Good climatic conditions. 

227 



Betterment through Education 

12. Camp-fire. 

13. Abundance of good food. 

14. Suitable clothing to rough it and be comfortable 

15. Communication with civilization. 

16. Being away from home and home habits. 

17. Abundant activity and great quantities of rest. 

18. New things of interest to claim the attention. 

Fortunately none of these things are expensive or 
hard to secure. A permanently established camp gen- 
erally has at least one roofed building, which is used 
as a dining-hall, a reading-room, museum and game 
room, and a gathering place on stormy days and even- 
ings. Surrounding this are tents where the boys sleep, 
a cooking tent and an office tent. Close at hand is 
a shore where the boats are kept and where bathing is 
safe. The location should be dry and sanitary, and 
sufficiently secluded from any neighborhood so that 
visitors will come to the camp only on definite days by 
invitation. The tents usually are floored, although if 
the ground be sandy this is not necessary, especially 
for a camp of only a week. In the school camps the 
boys often sleep upon regular beds, but sometimes 
cots are used, and in the less expensive camps the boys 
often sleep on straw ticks or rolled up in rubber 
ponchos on the ground. Even in some of the most 
expensive camps the only clothing worn is a bathing- 
suit, and the paraphernalia carried by each camper is 
reduced to the utmost simplicity. 

A day's program in a school camp, a Y. M. C. A. 
camp, or a well-conducted church camp, is about the 
same. The boys are awakened at half past six in the 

228 



Camps and Outings 



morning for a* dip, setting-up exercises and a seven 
o'clock breakfast. The morning hours are filled with 
a pretty definite program. The work of the camp has 
to be done, there may be a brief chapel exercise or 
an informal talk, and possibly there is tutoring, man- 
ual training or nature study. After dinner the boys 
should be encouraged to rest for at least half an hour. 
The afternoon is left free for their own choice, and the 
time is generally spent in baseball games, tramps and 
boating. There is usually an assembly around the 
camp-fire after supper, and after the first night the boys 
are encouraged to go to bed early, which they are 
always very glad to do. Swimming periods are for 
half an hour before dinner and supper, although some- 
times, when water sports are indulged in on hot after- 
noons, the boys may be in and out of the water for a 
considerably longer period. The day ends with the 
furling of the flag, the camp-fire, a hymn from a dis- 
tant bugle, prayers and sleep. Some camps vary this 
program by an annual prolonged walking trip into the 
mountains, in which the boys, each with his knapsack, 
carries the camp with him, and all sleep out of doors 
on fair nights or, in case of storm, in a barn, by ar- 
rangement with some kindly farmer. The Columbia 
Park Boys' Club of San Francisco has for ten years 
sent out from thirty to fifty boys upon a tramp of over 
five hundred miles. These are poor boys and they 
pay the expenses by playing ball games and giving 
minstrel shows and sacred concerts in the towns 
.through which they pass. These tours last all sum- 
mer, and are not only self-supporting but distinctly 

229 



Betterment through Education 

educational in character. Such groups of boys, under 
the leadership of a schoolmaster, are seen all over 
Germany every summer, visiting the various historical 
sites and places of scientific or industrial interest. We 
in America, with our more magnificent distances, have 
not appreciated our possibilities in this direction. 
Such tours, especially in the older portions of the coun- 
try, would be most instructive and inspiring. 

The educational value of studies pursued in camp 
is greater than that of similar studies in the winter, 
because of the keener interest it is possible to arouse. 
Nature study in winter is drawn out of text-books, but 
in camp the birds, the flowers and the soil suggest 
problems which make the child eager for investigation. 
The passion of boys and girls for constructing the im 
plements which they may use in the camp makes their 
formal or informal work with tools more interesting. 
Three or four boys will eagerly conspire to construct a 
secret shelter or outlook in the forest. Many boys will 
undergo with pleasure the long and laborious task of 
building a canoe, while almost all the campers are glad 
to make for themselves butterfly nets and the other 
necessaries of a natural history equipment. The per- 
sonal influence of the leader is exerted, not only through 
his intimate knowledge of the boy as he watches him, 
but by private talks, sometimes by appointment, and 
sometimes apparently by accident, in his office or in 
the woods. This intimacy, in the case of school and 
Association camps especially, may culminate at the 
close of the season in a "prescription" in the form of 
a frank, personal letter from the camp leader to the 

230 



Camps and Outings 



parents of the child, revealing information which it 
seems desirable for the parents to know, and making 
suggestions as to the child's studies and future voca- 
tion. Such a letter from an experienced camp master 
would be of inestimable value to any thoughtful 
parent. If such intimacy is to be real there should 
be not more than ten boys to a leader, and the 
master of a large camp should be freed from details 
so that he can mix with all the boys of each separate 
squad. 

We seem to need in America some kind of a sum- 
mer outing, especially for boys, which shall be self- 
supporting in character. Without discounting at all 
the great intellectual and moral advantages which 
come from close association with nature in wholesome 
play, under wise and good leaders, many boys, espe- 
cially those of high-school age, who are going soon to 
meet the problem of self-support, need summer exer- 
cise which shall have some element of recreation, but 
which shall also bring its financial income and be in- 
structive for future vocations. Mention of some ex- 
periments that have been made in this direction will 
be found at the close of the chapter on "The Regula- 
tion of Child Labor." 

Gardening as a summer occupation for city chil- 
dren has already been encouraged in many cities by 
the setting apart of vacant plots for such purposes. 
Such gardening is financially profitable only in a small 
way because the space assigned to each child is small. 
There is in these school gardens, when they are car- 
ried on through the summer, the joy of co-operation 

231 



Betterment through Education 

and competition and the moral influence of trained 
leadership. In a neglected portion of Worcester, 
Mass., a few years ago, the minister of a neighboring 
church practically changed the character of the child- 
hood of the region by opening an unused plot of 
ground for that purpose. The children instead of be- 
ing hoodlums became little laborers and citizens. The 
reflex influence of this work, especially in the famous 
gardens of Dayton, Ohio, upon the grounds and 
adornments of the homes, is well known. 

The possibility of using the schoolhouse as a cen- 
ter for summer educational work with children has 
long been appreciated. Not only do we have our 
playgrounds and our vacation schools, connected with 
the school buildings, but in villages where there is 
ready access to the country, the school building has 
been made the headquarters of a varied work in nature 
study and construction. One of the first and most 
successful of such experiments was that of the Andover 
Play School in Andover, Mass., conducted by the 
superintendent of schools himself. After gathering 
the boys and girls in the schoolhouse for some prelim- 
inary work, they were taken out into the woods to- 
gether. Everything which young people can do in 
the summer-time was brought together under these 
auspices — the building of a log cabin, carpentry work, 
the making of aquaria and all the instruments used in 
nature study, their outdoor sports, and even printing 
and literary composition. It was an extension of the 
school through the entire year, which had its influence 
upon the work of the winter. It has, no doubt, af- 

232 



Camps and Outings 



fected very deeply our educational theory and prac- 
tice everywhere. 

The development of the Boy Scouts seems to be' a 
revival of this plan of starting from a village, the com- 
munity center, and making the entire outdoor world 
the scene of operations. The varied methods of the 
Boy Scouts are referred to in another chapter, but none 
perhaps are more useful than the informal games, in 
which the qualities of agility and strength are utilized, 
with the additional incentive of the play-spirit. 

The work of "country week" and the fresh-air 
funds, which started two generations ago with the 
work of the New York Tribune, still continues qui- 
etly and effectively everywhere. The original plan 
was to send mothers and children of impaired health 
and vigor to farmers in the country, who should enter- 
tain them for ten days or a fortnight without expense. 
More recently it has generally been necessary and wise 
to raise money by which a moderate sum for board 
should be paid in each instance. Large parties of 
mothers and young people, selected by the missions 
and social settlements, and carefully examined before 
their departure, are sent off under competent leader- 
ship by trains and boats, almost every day in the sum- 
mer from New York and other large cities, to country 
junctions, where they are separated to their houses of 
entertainment. No doubt there is some danger of 
pauperizing those who receive these benefits, as is 
shown by the constant efforts of those who are thus 
benefited to repeat the experiment under other aus- 
pices. The pitiful needs of slum dwellers are such, 

233 



Betterment through Education 

however, that this charity, carefully administered, has 
no doubt saved thousands of lives. The change often 
gives the country hosts a new conception of city needs 
and perils, and sometimes results in the permanent 
adoption of children upon farms. Some of our social 
settlements and other institutions take children out for 
a day's outing. The old idea that all the child needed 
to make him happy was to bring him in to the woods 
finds its correction in the sad discovery that many city 
children have lost almost all their capacity for the en- 
joyment of nature and actually need a reinterpretation 
by those who conduct them, before such outings be- 
come entirely pleasurable. 

These various endeavors to bring larger and larger 
portions of our people into contact with nature and 
out-of-doors, and to educate children by the informal 
methods which such contact makes possible, have at 
their heart one or two great educational realizations. 
One of these is the realization that the summer, even 
more than the winter, is an opportunity for the train- 
ing and nurture of the young. Outdoor life brings a 
child into contact with a larger world than the school- 
room. Camp life presents real problems of personal 
resource and co-operative toil, and the sensitive soul 
of the child responds to the influences of the camp-fire 
and of fellowship, as to no other. "Country week" 
taught us what a vacation would do for a child's body, 
but the camp is showing us how much more it will do 
for his mind and spirit. The idle and empty sum- 
mer is a time of mental and moral deterioration to a 
child, and both the parent and the philanthropist and 

234 



Camps and Outings 



the educator need to make a still deeper study of the 
problem in order to bring these three months of the 
year up to the level of the other nine. 

REFERENCES 

The best book on camping out is : ' ' Camping for Boys, ' ' 
by H. W. Gibson. New York: The Association Press, 
1911. 

" Among School Gardens," by M. Louise Greene. New 
York: The Charities Publication Committee, 1910. 



XXII 

COLLEGE AND THE CHILD 

SOME months ago the writer was present in the 
late afternoon with a group of professional peo- 
ple, while Miss Marie Hofer was leading a group 
of boys and girls in folk dancing, upon the campus of 
Clark University. As he watched this merry sight, 
which had been organized by the President of the 
University himself, and in connection with some of its 
own researches in child study, he realized the contrast 
between this modern expression of university spirit 
and the cloistral isolation of the medieval universi- 
ties. The college has been criticised elsewhere in this 
book for laying its heavy hand upon the high-school 
and secondary school curricula, but it must be ac- 
knowledged that it has not done this selfishly. The 
college has imposed its dictates upon children inten- 
tionally for their own good, and it is now seeking as 
never before, both to win the children to its portals 
and to carry its helpfulness out unto them. 

A very effective way of bringing young people to 
the college and arousing their interest in a college edu- 
cation is seen in the interscholastic sports which are 
conducted upon a college campus and under the aus- 
pices of its athletic association, bringing together the 
strength of its tributary preparatory schools. Not only 

236 



College and the Child 



is there the wholesomeness of the field day, but in the 
hours of entertainment in the fraternity houses and 
dormitories the college men become the eager hosts of 
their younger brothers and endeavor to reveal to them 
the things worth while in college life. 

The State Agricultural Colleges have been active 
in relating themselves to the interests of farm boys and 
farm girls. In the state of Illinois the Agricultural 
College has organized a circle of corn planters' clubs 
among boys, and of home-makers' clubs among girls. 
Directions are sent out for organizing the clubs and 
for producing good corn and good bread. These 
clubs are invited to come with their parents to the 
State College for a winter visiting day, when prizes are 
awarded and the resources of the college are shown to 
parents and children. In some of the state colleges, 
Wisconsin for example, short winter courses are offered 
for faiuners' sons and daughters, without the require- 
ment of the entrance examination, intended both to 
help directly in farm problems and also to encourage 
further study. This work is supplemented by the cor- 
respondence courses and the lecture system and library 
service of the university. 

The colleges are not only bringing the young people 
to themselves, but are taking themselves bodily to the 
young people. They began to do this first through 
child study. This study, beginning at Clark Univer- 
sity, started with the endeavor to comprehend more 
accurately the various development of childhood, but 
of late these studies have become very practical and are 
relating themselves to the problems of child life. 
17 237 



Betterment through Education 

President Kenyon L. Butterfield, for example, has led 
in studies of the social conditions of rural children, 
and Professor Frank C. Sharp of the University of 
Wisconsin has made a special study of the ethical ideas 
of farmers' sons and daughters. The state colleges are 
carrying their extension lectures, their moving schools, 
agricultural trains and practical bulletins to every 
corner of the state. By exhibits and judging contests 
at the county fairs, by conducting demonstrations at 
the county farms, by sending horticultural and home- 
making specialists to farmers' institutes, these colleges 
keep close to the life of the people. The University 
of Wisconsin actually offers help in preparing debates 
to country lyceums, and has deputed Mr. Edward J. 
Ward, of long experience in recreation centers in city 
schools, to organize social centers in the towns and vil- 
lages of Wisconsin. Men like " Uncle John" of Cor- 
nell University, and Dr. Edward F. Bigelow of the 
Agassiz Association offer boys and girls the opportu- 
nity to ask questions of, and receive answers from uni- 
versity professors in the whole realm of natural science. 

The college is beginning to appreciate its respon- 
sibility for strengthening the leadership of rural life. 
Andover Theological Seminary has conducted for a 
number of years "A mud-time Theological School," 
and several state agricultural colleges hold every sum- 
mer a special school for rural pastors. West Virginia 
University has a summer school for Sunday-school 
teachers, and the University of California offers a 
course for training leaders in the Boy Scouts. 

This responsibility for young people has been felt 
238 



College and the Child 



not only by faculties, but also by students. Under 
the guidance of the Y. M. C. A., deputations of Chris- 
tian students have been going out for a number of 
years from the colleges to the country districts and to 
country academies, sometimes to conduct preaching 
services and evangelical meetings, but also to refresh 
the dreariness of the winter by informal lecture courses 
and concerts. 

The Vacation Bible Schools of New York and 
other cities represent the most practical social and 
moral contact between the college student and child- 
hood and between the college and the city, which has 
yet been suggested. The opportunity is obvious. 
Here are the children adrift upon the streets. Here 
are the churches, with their cool and spacious rooms, 
empty. Here are the college men and women, com- 
petent, free and in need of a summer income. "They 
have," as Dr. Milton G. Evans says, "no college tra- 
ditions to maintain. They have no inducements to 
displace pedantry; they have no temptation to assume 
the dignity that is supposed to attach to an academic 
gown. They meet children in classes, in conversation, 
in play, in visits to homes. They dress neatly and 
tastefully. They have cultivated manners. They 
have powers of adaptation for both the seriousness and 
the abandon of college life. They have the maturity of 
young manhood and young womanhood. They have 
the enthusiasm of optimism. The college friend be- 
comes an ideal to the street urchin." The subjects 
taught are various. The art of reading is applied to 
literature of a wholesome, uplifting sort. Instruction 

239 



Betterment through Education 

in drawing, required in day schools, is directed to 
sacred places and districts by requiring maps of places 
associated with incidents in the life of Christ. Voices 
are trained by singing especially the religious and patri- 
otic airs, and memories are stored with choice devo- 
tional and national lyrics. Manual training is also 
taught and is applied in ingenious ways to Bible study. 
The result is that for eight consecutive weeks, for six 
days of each week, "children are being trained by the 
process of substitution. Amusements and sports are 
substituted for rowdyism. Work and study are sub- 
stituted for aimless comradeship. Cultured men and 
women take the place of evil companionship. Ideals 
aroused from the college atmosphere displace the ideals 
of the slums." The reaction of such work upon the 
college students themselves is most wholesome. It 
relieves their scholasticism. It redeems them from 
selfishness and restores the spirit of evangelism and 
social service to their hearts. It must inevitably tend 
to make college ideals and work more humane and 
more close to modern needs and problems. 

REFERENCES 

"College Extension in Agriculture/' edited by John 
Hamilton, Experiment Station Bulletin 231. Washington: 
Government Printing Office, 1910. 

"Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs," by F. W. 
Howe, Farmers' Bulletin 385. Washington: Government 
Printing Office, 1910. 



XXIII 

THE BEAUTIFUL ORDERING OF LIFE 

THE child is educated not only by the home, the 
school and the church but also by the commu- 
nity. While the community is largely the re- 
flex of the home, the school and the church, yet it is 
not perfectly so, and there is much which could be ac- 
complished by a civic conscience which would better 
express in the community the ideals which the indi- 
viduals of the community feel and express in their 
homes, their schools and their churches. We are 
aware that our community life in America has by no 
means reached the ideal. Our community govern- 
ment, our community art, and all that belongs to the 
beautiful ordering of life, is not satisfactory to us nor 
thoroughly wholesome to our children. A glimpse of 
Old World cities, the quieter towns in England, the 
old walled cities in Germany and the Tuscan and Um- 
brian towns, with the village squares as community 
meeting-places and frequent festas as expressions of 
community joy — to such things we have not yet 
attained in America. 

It has been the author's experience to spend a week 
at a time in thirty different county seats in the mid- 
dle West. These towns, representative neither of our 
oldest nor our newest civilization and overwhelmingly 

241 



Betterment through Education 

American in population, may be regarded as fairly 
typical of our average American community life. The 
obvious features of such a town of three to ten thou- 
sand people are familiar. Its heart is the courthouse, 
a pretentious building, sometimes noble and some- 
times atrocious in architecture, occupying the center of 
a square, toward which all the principal streets con- 
verge in straight lines. With this building the archi- 
tectural ambitions of the county are satisfied, and it has 
no apparent influence upon other structures, public or 
private. Its functions are entirely public and judicial, 
except as it may contain a rest-room for women. The 
green upon which it stands is often surrounded by 
hitching-posts, filled with teams from the country on 
every market-day. The trolley line deposits its pas- 
sengers at a neighboring corner. The park is usually 
filled with trees. There is generally a very ugly sol- 
diers' monument somewhere within, and a beautiful 
flag streams from a flagpole at the top of the building. 
The stores which surround this square are almost in- 
variably an ill-assorted and unrelated quadrilateral of 
homely brick or wooden fronts. The vacant lots are 
filled with garish billboards. The streets, except 
those adjacent to the square, are unpaved and stretch 
out in long, straight, dusty lines into the country. 
The hotel which stands somewhere along the line of 
stores is usually indifferently well kept. Unless this 
be a railroad center, it is chiefly a saloon. Its em- 
ployees, habitues and guests are generally not additions 
to the community. A week's sojourn at such a 
hostelry is a suffering infliction. 

242 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

The wayfarer in such a town goes forth for recrea- 
tion or amusement. If his tastes be refined he turns 
to a sign " Books" upon a near-by store, and entering 
discovers the most popular collection of patent medi- 
cines, a table filled with the cheaper magazines and 
fifty-cent reprints, and a few shelves filled with school 
text-books, the poems of Riley and Mrs. Wilcox, and 
a small dusty collection of gift books and classics. He 
finds in a neighboring furniture store a few framed 
chromos and cheap pastels, mostly of a sentimental 
character. If he has had the privilege of access to 
great libraries and galleries it comes over him with a 
sense of dismay, the privation to a family which must 
spend its days with these as the limitations of its 
literary and artistic opportunities. He will find, it is 
true, upon a neighboring street usually, a Carnegie 
Library, with a few choice pictures upon the walls and 
a well-chosen collection upon the shelves, open to the 
public, and reading-rooms, usually empty except for 
the presence of children. When evening comes he 
will turn to the public sources of recreation through 
the drama. These, he will learn, consist in the sum- 
mer-time of a number of five-cent moving picture 
shows, with films usually irreproachable in character, 
exhibited in shanties, poorly ventilated and not sug- 
gestive of moral associations of the highest quality. 
In winter there will perhaps be the ten-twenty-thirty 
cent show in the "opera house," consisting always of 
melodrama or vaudeville, performed by a fourth-class 
traveling company. Reflection shows that there are 
many communities of ten thousand population and 

243 



Betterment through Education 

over that never see a classical drama or a first-class ac- 
tor. These, however, are not the recreational limits 
of the community. Every fourth or fifth county seat 
supports a Chautauqua, which runs for from one to 
three weeks just after harvest. The most beautiful 
grove in the outskirts is set apart for this purpose, and 
while the opportunity of consecutive study and in- 
struction is not ample, these great outdoor universities 
are usually conducted by the best people of the com- 
munity with the single-hearted aim for uplift, the 
profits being devoted entirely to the sustentation of 
the institution. At some of these Chautauquas hun- 
dreds of farmers and citizens live together in tents 
with their families, in idyllic fellowship. The great 
preachers and popular statesmen of the country speak 
their messages, and occasionally a fine orchestra or 
singing chorus or company of outdoor players offers 
to appreciative thousands the best which music or the 
drama can give. A less ideal but more indigenous 
festival follows in the late fall, in the county fair. 
The desire to know and to wager upon the respective 
speed of different horses has tended to overshadow 
the purely agricultural exhibits,] but these great re- 
union places of kinsmen and neighbors are a joyous 
break in the summer's heat and toil. The teachers' 
institutes, gathering together the two hundred and 
fifty grade teachers of the county, to listen for five 
days to twenty lectures from the best educational ex- 
perts of the land, are a unique feature, especially of 
Indiana life, not appreciated perhaps by the public, 
but directly reacting through the uplift of this army of 

244 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

teachers for the public good. The winter-time brings 
to such communities the lyceum. There are those 
who sigh for the grand old days when Emerson, Wen- 
dell Phillips and Henry Ward Beecher were platform 
stars. They do not perhaps realize that the humbler 
men who now occupy the stage, making the lyceum 
and the Chautauqua their livelihood, are mostly men 
of high ideals, who have a distinct desire to be help- 
ful, and who probably appeal to the popular heart and 
intellect more directly and effectively than did even 
the geniuses of old. 

A most important but neglected factor in the higher 
life of these communities is the country newspaper, 
circulating in almost every household, every word of 
it read and trusted every week by its readers. It offers 
through its "patent inside" access to the national and 
international world of affairs, through its local pages 
an intimate knowledge of the sufferings and successes 
of its readers, and through its editorial page a guide 
to political, civic and moral convictions. The coun- 
try newspaper as a whole no doubt has a broader and 
deeper influence upon American opinion than the 
metropolitan press. 

The appreciation of the beautiful has entered slowly 
into church architecture. With the occasional excep- 
tion of the Episcopal church, and the Episcopal church 
is usually not strong in cities of this class, church 
architecture is generally showy and always ugly. The 
fact that durability, sincerity, dignity and simplicity 
constitute beauty has not yet dawned upon the average 
church architect and building committee. It is a sur- 

245 



Betterment through Education 

prising thing to one who has visited the churches in 
these county seats to find how generally institutional 
and social features are absent. Except for Sunday 
schools, with their infrequent festivals, and Christian 
Endeavor Societies, the church in the average small 
city is closed, except for two occasions — the public 
worship and the mid-week prayer meeting. The 
sense of beauty has not yet come, except in churches 
of historic ritual, into the services of worship, and they 
are almost invariably bald and, seemingly to the stran- 
ger, irreverential. Even the grand old hymns have 
been largely supplemented by gospel music, often de- 
liberately written in waltz and two-step time. The 
minister, himself a son of the people and educated in 
the colleges of the people, has both the virtues and the 
failings of his congregation. He is generally a man 
of sturdy integrity and high ideals, but his childhood 
in a town like this, his education in the country col- 
lege, and his life-struggle with hardship, have not 
given him access to the great sources of light and food. 
Aside from what are often charming exercises on Chil- 
dren's Day, the social gatherings of the churches are 
generally what are called "paid shows," and are not 
contributions toward musical or literary taste. The 
great annual festival in such churches is the revival. 
These occasions of religious turmoil are distinctly 
planned for, and are usually conducted by professional 
revivalists. Every endeavor is made to appeal to the 
religious emotions of old and young, and always the 
other church activities, and even the commercial activ- 
ities of these small cities, are almost at a standstill 

246 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

while the religious excitement is on. It is not the 
writer's intention to criticise these social features or 
omissions of the churches per se. What he desires 
rather to point out is that these churches, predomi- 
nantly American and Protestant, have social duties and 
opportunities for education and refinement which they 
owe to themselves and to their children, which they 
have entirely neglected. That they have done this is 
due not entirely to lack of desire, but often, no doubt, 
to the overmultiplication of warring sects and the 
struggle for life which ensues. The relation of such 
churches, for example, to the problem of the amuse- 
ment of young people is a dangerous and impossible 
one. They have generally frowned upon dancing and 
theater-going, but have not realized, with the growth 
of the community or the increasing accessibility of the 
city to the young people from the farms, that they 
must provide or find provision for social substitutes 
for the young. 

A study of the fraternal lodges, which seem to em- 
brace in their membership nearly all the adult men of 
these smaller cities, shows that they too have failed in 
their social obligations in the communities which they 
represent. The older societies equip lodge-rooms 
which are often closed, except upon meeting nights, but 
the Elks, representative of the younger and more social 
men, and gathering to themselves the itinerant com- 
panies of commercial travelers, often equip club- 
houses, which are constant places of resort to the young 
men of the community. It is not the writer's purpose 
to analyze the inspirations and possible abuses of these 

247 



Betterment through Education 

various secret societies. It is not, however, enough 
for such organizations to insist that they were not or- 
ganized for generally social and philanthropic pur- 
poses. The principles which their rituals embody are 
the noblest and most generous. Many such men claim 
that the lodge is their church. Then the ideals, rep- 
resented in these men's churches, ought to work them- 
selves out in a community life more beautiful and 
wholesome than they have yet obtained. Any frater- 
nal organization which gathers together a considerable 
multitude of citizens incurs civic obligations. 

The earnestness and efficiency of the women's clubs 
are a refreshing contrast to the passiveness of the or- 
ganizations of men. Their programs represent a fine 
literary and social aim, even though it be somewhat 
diffusive. They organize departments for definite 
social purposes, and they earnestly set themselves to 
studying and supplying the community's needs. 

This hastily drawn picture of the small city allows 
little room for lights and shades. In intention our 
American county seats are wholesome. Actual life in 
them is unnecessarily dreary and colorless. For the 
sake of the children, and it is their interest only 
which we are considering in these pages, the moral 
enthusiasm of these towns, which is undeniably great, 
needs only to be focused and put into channels of 
work, in order to make our small cities as beautiful as 
they are strong. There are already many hopeful 
examples of civic conscience and cooperation. 

In the one state of Indiana, which has been cited 
as so thoroughly American, and which is often referred 

248 






The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

to for its unique' state loyalty and universal literary as- 
pirations, several cities deserve honorable mention. 
The city of Kokomo has created a beautiful park in its 
outskirts, which is not only a place for looking at 
flowers, but contains a small zoo, generous picnic 
grounds and a children's playground. In Columbia 
City there is a library, established largely through the 
generosity of a professional man, where the books are 
arranged, not by a decimal classification but apparently 
in the order in which they may interest children, and 
where the alcoves are filled with rocking-chairs as a 
practical temptation to sit and read or rest. In Rich- 
mond, apparently the entire population lives on the 
Chautauqua grounds for a month in the summer. 
There is a wonderful movement in its public schools, 
which has resulted in the purchase not of reproduc- 
tions merely but of original paintings of great value, 
and with this is associated the famous Richmond Art 
Association which brings every year to this small city 
an exhibit of the finest things which the metropolitan 
exhibits see, and which now makes the rounds of a 
circuit of neighboring cities of the same size. The 
public-school children take trips in barges to the coun- 
try and to outside industries and points of interest. 
•Behind all is the old Quaker college, Earlham, whose 
spirit, no doubt, has produced this fine atmosphere. 
Other cities have adopted the curfew as a negative 
help toward a finer child life, and in still others high- 
school choruses and orchestras, boys' corn-planting 
clubs and girls' home-making clubs, and the redemp- 
tion of rural isolation through the trolley line, the 

249 



Betterment through Education 

rural delivery and the concentrated rural high school 
have done much to justify Indiana's claim of being 
educationally the most alert state in the country. 

The problem of the social life of large cities is so 
different from that of the same problem in small cities 
that it requires an entirely separate discussion. In the 
small cities an energetic individual or organization or 
a social force may begin at the center and reach the 
entire circumference of the communal life, but a large 
city is either a congeries of small cities or else a great 
unorganized mass of people which has not yet discov- 
ered its own social conscience. Social forces set to 
work in large cities are apt either to affect certain 
neighborhoods only or certain social levels. Some- 
times, however, originating in the intellectual institu- 
tions of the city, movements start forth which have 
very generally and helpfully affected many classes. A 
few of these movements in our larger centers, which 
especially work toward the refinement of the life of 
children, are now to be mentioned. 

The dramatic instinct of children is so fundamen- 
tal and influential that it not only manifests itself in 
most of their play, but also seeks satisfaction in the 
public playhouse. Studies made by public-school 
teachers have shown that an astonishing majority of 
school boys and girls are in the habit of regular attend- 
ance upon some dramatic entertainment, those who 
go at all usually going regularly at least once and 
sometimes two or three times a week. The only 
American city which has followed the example of Eu- 
ropean municipalities by owning a theater is the city 

250 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

of Marietta, Ohio. In some cities, more or less official 
efforts are made to censor the attractions of the bur- 
lesque theaters so that they shall not offend the moral 
sense of the community or be objectionable because of 
their influence upon children. Much more harmful 
than these playhouses are those where melodrama is 
given, especially those devoted to the dramatization 
of stories of the nickel-novel class. If the nickel- 
novel itself is an incitement toward criminal acts, how 
much more impressive must be the influence of the 
play where such deeds are visualized! The police 
records show that the imitativeness of children has of- 
ten led them to deeds of daring or of crime, which 
were directly inspired by these performances. Of 
late, however, the attendance upon the cheap theaters 
of every sort has been greatly diminished by the sud- 
den and enormous popularity of the motion picture 
places. It is claimed that three times as many people 
now witness photo-plays as attend all other varieties of 
drama put together. It is stated that the attendance 
upon any Sunday at these nickel playhouses is over 
half a million in the city of New York alone, and that 
all over the country the totals of attendance are so 
great as to reach into millions daily. Mr. John Col- 
lier, of the National Board of Censorship of Motion 
Pictures, states that the motion-picture show has not 
only made great inroads on the cheap burlesque and 
vaudeville, but has also caused the malicious penny ar- 
cades to disappear, and has made both the saloons and 
the cheap dance halls to suffer greatly. "While, " as he 
says, "the motion-picture show retains many evils that 

251 



Betterment through Education 

have characterized the forms of amusement it has re- 
placed, it must be recognized that the moving-picture 
show has merely segregated these evils in a place where 
they can be effectively attacked and where they can be 
attacked with the active cooperation of the great major- 
ity in the audience, for this majority is made up of 
families and of really conscientious people of the wage- 
earning classes." The National Board of Censorship 
now controls the moral character of 80 per cent, of all 
the motion pictures. While it does not eliminate all 
crime pictures, it does withhold its approval from pic- 
tures of prize fights or wanton sensationalism, of pe- 
culiarly dangerous suggestiveness, of pictures of crim- 
inality or idle cruelty, and, of course, from anything 
of an obscene tendency. 

Mr. Collier makes this important statement — 
" Apart from wearing apparel, the illustrated maga- 
zine, and a church ceremonial, the motion picture is 
the leading artistic expression of the American masses. 
It is the only form of deliberate and conscious art in 
which the American wage-earning public participates. " 
When we recall that the motion-picture audiences in- 
clude nearly 400,000 children, mostly of this class, we 
realize its important part in the artistic development 
of our children. Morally, it may be said to-day that 
the American motion-picture show is nearly unexcep- 
tionable, and while more or less coarse comedy is oc- 
casionally presented, the majority of the pictures tell 
some great, swiftly moving and wholesome story. 
They often conduct the spectator to distant parts of 
the earth and inform him concerning the processes of 

252 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

commerce and great industries, and sometimes, even 
in the stories which they tell, they open the eye to 
landscapes and genre pictures of great artistic beauty. 
No doubt children attend too often, and when they do 
they become crazy for excitement and less capable for 
any serious tasks. The problem of protection from 
fire, the health problem, the problem of pure air, the 
problem of eye-strain, and the problem of overstimu- 
lation along nervous lines, are incidental, and must be 
handled and solved locally. They are all problems 
that are susceptible of solution, and the educational 
and inspirational possibilities of this new institution 
are so great that it is well worth while for educators, 
parents and friends of civic welfare to cooperate heart- 
ily in causing this new dramatic opportunity to come 
into its fullest values. 

Our cities have done more for public music than 
for public drama. While the great orchestras have to 
be supported through private initiative, music in the 
parks and squares at public expense is becoming more 
common, and while the character of music performed 
is not always distinctively noble, it may be said that it 
is probably usually a step in advance of the average 
popular taste. 

One dramatic expression is beginning to enter into 
the co-operative life of our cities, in the development 
of great city fetes. New Orleans has for years had its 
Mardi Gras. Los Angeles has its Flower Show. In 
Detroit there is an annual Children's Day at Belle 
Isle, with a musical and dramatic entertainment, fur- 
nished by the city and performed by school children. 
18 253 



Betterment through Education 

The conventions of the G. A. R. and other great 
patriotic festivals have been beautified by the gather- 
ing of hundreds of children into a "living flag," and 
by the rendering of patriotic cantatas. There is a 
rapidly growing movement in this country for a sane 
Fourth. The fact that until recently the annual mor- 
tality of children as the result of Independence Day 
exhibitions has been greater than that of the battle of 
Bunker Hill, reaching in one year to 72 deaths and 
2,736 injuries, and has produced, during the past ten 
years, a human loss — and that almost entirely of chil- 
dren — greater than that of the entire War for Indepen- 
dence, has caused a great sobering of mind among us. 
The endeavor to make a Fourth which shall be patriotic 
and uplifting, and yet as fascinating as firecrackers, is 
calling forth considerable ingenuity. The program so 
far arranged consists usually of historic floats, partici- 
pated in by the school children and Sunday-school 
children, each school or class being responsible for a 
single car. There is also a tendency toward the devel- 
opment of the historical pageant. These pageants, 
which originated in England on the anniversaries of 
great historic events, have signalized a return to the 
simplicities of the Elizabethan period, with the large- 
ness of theme and execution which is possible to out- 
door performances. One or two such pageants have 
been seen in our own country, and it is to be hoped 
that the sane Fourth movement will develop great out- 
door displays of a] historic and patriotic character, 
which shall be inspiring to adults and children alike, 
which shall utilize the various race elements which 

254 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

exist in every great city, and which shall become an 
expression of the essential unity of our American 
population. 

A word ought to be said, in passing, of the great 
indoor pageant of "Darkness and Light," which was 
originally given in London in 1908, and has recently 
been reproduced in the city of Boston under the aus- 
pices of the great Foreign Missionary Exposition, and 
which is about to be presented in whole or in part in 
other cities of our country. This is a magnificent re- 
turn to an ancient function of the church, in the use 
of drama for sacred ends, which gives a conception of 
the world-wide reach and revolutionary power of 
Christian missions. It is to be hoped that this pageant 
will have its influence in time in all church life, in 
adding the dramatic element to Children's Day and 
the children's concerts, and lifting the exhibitions of 
the churches in which children take part above silli- 
ness, indefiniteness and the use of cheap and tawdry 
music and devices. 

A number of interesting endeavors are being made 
to bring art within the reach of the people. The great 
interest which many of our foreign races, especially 
those of Southern Europe, express in the museums, 
particularly when they are open on Sunday, encourages 
settlement workers to bring exhibits of the best recent 
paintings within the reach of the poor, and these ex- 
hibits, wherever held, have always been crowded. 
The Boston Museum of Art has recently appointed 
"docents," well-equipped men and women whose 
work it is to move quietly among the throngs in the 

255 



Betterment through Education 

different rooms of the museum and volunteer to ex- 
plain to individuals or groups the significance of paint- 
ings ' or other exhibits. Mr. Henry W. Kent of the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art has suggested that the 
school board should appoint a "supervisor of museum 
instruction and appreciation," to rank among the super- 
visors of other subjects of instruction, and systematic- 
ally guide the school children of New York to this 
museum. 

Our public libraries have long been doing an im- 
portant work in opening their resources to the people. 
The children's rooms usually have one or more attend- 
ants who give their entire time to a friendly guidance 
of the reading and studying of their young patrons. 
Many libraries have a story-telling hour each week, 
when the great stories of humanity are told and the 
children are introduced, through the story, to the 
riches of the world of books. The libraries are not 
only opening branches in every district of their cities, 
but they are also placing small collections in the school- 
houses, the Sunday schools, the parks, and even the 
playgrounds. The Children's Aid Society of Boston 
was the first to devise the plan of home libraries, send- 
ing a box of books and choice pictures to homes among 
the poor, and asking volunteer visitors to go with 
these collections and tell stories to the children and 
make the pictures and books as helpful as possible. 

The great free-lecture system sustained by the 
Board of Education in the schoolhouses of New York 
City, and now imitated in Chicago and a few other 
cities, is an evening university, to be mentioned in 

256 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

this chapter not for its direct influence upon the chil- 
dren, because school children are not admitted, but be- 
cause the instruction and inspiration of parents in these 
lectures, attended in New York City by a million and 
a quarter of persons every winter, must have great in- 
direct value in the bringing up and refining of chil- 
dren. Some of these lectures have to do immediately 
with the problems of the home and the child, and 
others give a broader outlook which may refresh the 
mother or inform the father, so that they may be better 
companions and guides to their children. 

Much has been said concerning recreation in the 
chapter on " Play and Playgrounds," but this is the 
place in which to mention the efforts which are being 
made to handle the problem of dancing, especially in 
New York City. It is believed that nearly 80 per 
cent, of the girls between fourteen and twenty, of the 
working classes in New York, regularly attend the pub- 
lic dance-hall. The average attendance at the dancing 
academies in New York City in a week is one hun- 
dred thousand young people, 90 per cent, of whom 
are under twenty-one years of age and 45 per cent, 
under sixteen. Says Mrs. Charles Henry Israels, 
Chairman of the Committee on Amusements and Va- 
cation Resources of Working Girls in New York 
City: "Every healthy and normal girl of fourteen be- 
lieves that on the first Saturday night when she receives 
her first week's wages she is a free and independent 
being, and she is going down to the dance hall to have 
a good time." The schools and settlements and 
churches used to feel afraid of the responsibility if they 

257 



Betterment through Education 

allowed young people to meet each other and encour- 
age their being together in social relationships, but the 
influences of the public dance hall from Maine to Cali- 
fornia, which are the same, are so dangerous that the 
problem can be ignored no longer. The influence of 
the promiscuous company, the excitement and the 
drinking, with the saloon and the vicious hotel an- 
nexed, are so obvious that those who have a real inter- 
est in the moral and social welfare of young people 
have found themselves obliged to take hold of this 
matter boldly. 

In New York City a law has been secured to 
license and regulate all dance places. These places 
must now comply with the building and fire laws. 
Liquor cannot be sold, served nor given away in the 
room in which dancing is taught, nor in any room on 
the same floor connected with it. The presence of 
girls under sixteen, unaccompanied by adults, or the 
indulgence in improper dancing and disorderly con- 
duct make the license subject to revocation. This 
good law gives the opportunity to regulate, but it is 
not enough. We may describe the further steps that 
have been taken, in Mrs. Israel's own words: 

"We have persuaded the public schools to allow 
dancing in the evening recreation centers, and we have 
plans for organizing a number of successful dancing 
classes in the immediate vicinity of some of the worst 
dancing academies. We have already two model 
dance halls in operation. It is not known to the 
young people who attend them that they are anything 
but money-making establishments. They are run in 

258 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

direct business competition with others in the neigh- 
borhood. Five hundred have had instruction in dan- 
cing at one of our model academies, and not one of 
those young people suspects that he is going to a place 
that has even the shadow of philanthropy over it. It 
is run by a first-class dancing master. Anybody who 
enters as a pupil must do so with the distinct under- 
standing that he must dance in an orderly manner and 
behave in a proper way. We are opening a second 
one that is to meet the problem of the dance hall as 
such, and to show what a real social institution the 
dance hall may become. This is modeled after the 
Pavilion in San Francisco, which is ideal as a com- 
mercial enterprise and has been in operation for a 
number of years. We are offering three dances for 
five cents. The floor is cleared after the third dance. 
We have a corps of introducers. The rule is that a 
young man may not dance with a girl until he has 
been introduced. We get his name by a system of 
registration when he comes in. We issue a certain 
number of invitations. He is complimented by re- 
ceiving one. When the young man comes he is given 
a card with his name on it, which is good for thirty 
admissions. It costs him nothing. The girls do not 
pay. The money is made on the three dances for five 
cents. They come in free. The introducer will ask 
the young woman if he may introduce the young man. 
It is done, and they dance. His address is verified by 
sending a post-card notice. If it is returned to us we 
know he has given a wrong address, and then he is re- 
fused admission again. The girls who come too fre- 

259 



Betterment through Education 

quently are notified, and their parents are notified that 
they are coming to the dance hall every night in the 
week. Or, if the girl ceases coming we notify the 
parents that she is not at our dance hall now and they 
should see where she is, that we have no further re- 
sponsibility. We have parents' nights once a month, 
when a special program is provided. We have gone 
in for confetti showers, prize waltzes and various kinds 
of wholesome vaudeville features. We expect to go 
into every type of novelty that will compete with the 
man next door. We must rely upon the excellence 
of our floor and music in order to get the young 
people to come to us. 

"In the meantime we ask the city, where the re- 
sponsibility rests after all, to introduce just such dance 
halls, to adopt publicly into the life of the city such 
features of these places as they legitimately can. As 
the first practical experiment we are asking the use of 
one of the recreation piers of the city. We plan to 
organize a committee from the neighborhood, who 
will act as introducers and supervise the dancing, and 
to put in charge a man of character who is the best 
dancing master in New York, with the best assistants 
we can find, a man accustomed to handling five hun- 
dred to a thousand couples at once. It will be open 
every night in the week, with a concert program on 
Sunday. This is the beginning of the municipal 
dance-hall idea. In Philadelphia, when I suggested 
the idea, the mayor stated publicly that the new play- 
grounds being fitted up in Philadelphia should each 
be equipped with a municipal dance platform. Thus 

260 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

the first constructive work of the Philadelphia Recrea- 
tion Committee will be the organizing and equipping 
of such a dance hall. 

"This is my special message. The responsibility 
rests upon the community itself. There should be 
provision for the recreation of the older boys and girls, 
just as you have provided recreation for the little chil- 
dren. In the social dance there is a larger opportu- 
nity for proper enjoyment and for obtaining good re- 
sults than there ever could be in the folk dance. You 
have the natural resource which everybody seeks. 
There is no easier avenue of approach to young peo- 
ple than through the thing they want. If you give 
them that you have the opportunity to lead them to 
the other things you want for them. There is no city, 
large or small, but can utilize the desire for play by 
giving something better to the older boys and girls in 
its parks than benches. Every keeper of amusement 
parks or picnic grounds has learned that ages ago. 
He knows that he must give them a chance to dance. 
If he appeals to the girls he knows he will get the 
boys. The girls do not spend the money, but they 
draw the boys who do. If you in your playgrounds 
and social centers bring to the young people the thing 
they want, you will get a hold on them, and through 
them on their fathers r.nd mothers. I know of no 
more inspiring sight than I saw in Chicago, where the 
young people gave an exhibition of their year's work, 
with their fathers and mothers and relatives in attend- 
ance, and winding up with a dance. In Chicago, 
however, until recently, they have failed to use their 

261 



Betterment through Education 

field houses to the fullest extent. Only certain organ- 
izations were allowed to use them for dancing, and 
they closed at twenty minutes to eleven — plenty of 
time to go afterward to the dance halls of the neigh- 
borhood. There is in some, now at least, one even- 
ing given up. to public dancing, where any one who 
wants to dance may go in. We have been afraid, have 
been cowards, have been hypocrites. It is for us to 
provide the wholesome recreation, and not to leave it 
to the other people to provide in full measure the 
unwholesome opportunity for it." 

An entirely different way of beautifying life is by 
beautifying its surroundings. In several American 
cities, usually under the auspices of the local Federa- 
tion of Women's Clubs, seeds and sometimes shrubs 
are sold at cost every spring, through the teachers in 
the public schools. Prizes are also offered for the best 
results from this sowing and planting. Sometimes 
these prizes are offered for the best-kept lawn or best- 
kept back-yard, or the best-kept alley in the city. 
The influence of this movement is not only upon the 
children and their parents, but also upon the neighbor- 
hoods, which are likely to imitate the endeavors and 
good results of the vigorous and enthusiastic children. 

The beautifying of city life has found its largest 
and latest expression in city planning. Our newest 
cities, instead of accepting the inspired rectangle as the 
basis of the laying out of streets, are asking landscape 
architects for guidance. Our great cities like Chicago, 
Cleveland and Pittsburgh are planning elaborate and 
expensive destructions and constructions which shall 

262 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

lead to the erection of great civic centers, the opening 
of plazas and boulevards, and the repossession by the 
city of river fronts and lake fronts. Probably the 
noblest expression of the unit city ideal is that of 
"Boston— 1915." In this instance, as Mr. Paul U. 
Kellogg says, "A Puritan community has visualized 
its own heaven and started deliberately to make a new 
Jerusalem of itself." The leaders of the movement 
have inspired the citizens of Boston to accept a dozen 
ideals, to be worked out and fulfilled within five 
years. 

The problem of the rural community or the farm 
region is again entirely different from that of the city, 
great or small. The main problem is, through the 
inducements of profit and pleasure there, to retain in 
the country strong resident forces in the persons of a 
good population. Country life must first be made 
profitable.' For rich men to buy great estates and em- 
ploy many hands or for a region of truck gardens to 
develop around a city is beside the question. Indeed 
the sequestration of great acreages and the multiplica- 
tion of tenant farmers in America is bringing us to the 
verge of a land question as serious as that which Eng- 
land has inherited from feudalism. Into this problem 
of making farming a matter of scientifically planned 
profit under many conditions, the problem which un- 
derlies the welfare of children who live in the country, 
we cannot of course enter here. Our special province 
is the social problem of the farm. 

Here there is not enough contact for social warmth. 
There is the conservatism which exists in any com- 

263 



Betterment through Education 

munity where the young life has been drained off, 
there is ever a suspicion of the foreign element which 
has taken up the abandoned farms, and there is little 
money with which to work out needed improvements. 
The single problem of maintaining the highways of a 
scattered and hilly community is a heavy tax upon its 
resources, yet the dreariness, the retrogression and even 
the immorality and barbarism of some of the oldest 
isolated communities in this country are terrifying. 
Fundamentally the farms must ever be the source of 
renewal of American life, and some have already ex- 
pressed the fear that the city must actually be quaran- 
tined from the country unless those sources can be 
made and kept pure. A number of institutions, not 
distinctly planned to be social, have an important 
social function. The trolley line, the telephone and 
the rural free delivery have done much to obviate the 
dreariness of country life and to make such communi- 
ties neighbors. Such papers as "The Ladies' Home 
Journal" and the cheaper periodicals edited for farm- 
ers and country people, with their almost universal 
circulation, have had a most important effect not only 
in furnishing the fashions and the latest modes of agri- 
cultural progress, but also in communicating to these 
isolated homes the stimulus of the movements of our 
modern life and some contact with the most wholesome 
American ideals. 

We are beginning to reappraise the value and the 
functions of the country church and country minister. 
The country church has always been a religious and 
intellectual center. It is now to become a social cen- 

264 






The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

ter. Those preparing for the country ministry are 
being urged to familiarize themselves with agricultural 
and rural problems, and in more than one instance the 
state agricultural colleges are holding an annual confer- 
ence for country ministers and concerning rural condi- 
tions. The state of Massachusetts for a number of 
years has had a "Mud-time Theological School,' ' 
which has been imitated elsewhere, where country min- 
isters are gathered together for a week or two during 
the time when the country roads are nearly impassable, 
for the sake of conferring together concerning their 
mutual problems. The seminaries must exalt the 
rural ministry as a life work, and perhaps organize 
volunteer bands to enter rural states together. The 
denominations are beginning to see that the rural 
problem is too serious a one to be met any longer in 
the hit-or-miss and competitive manner with which 
they have been doing. Already there are commis- 
sions on comity which decide which communion shall 
have the chance to enter any proposed new field, which 
church shall surrender where only one of two is needed, 
and have already helped some villages so to conserve 
the buildings and property and the ministers that they 
become practically one federated enterprise, economic- 
ally administered and doing a variety of service which 
had hitherto not been possible. This sort of thing 
must go on mightily and generally if the country min- 
istry is to become a grateful task, worth a young man's 
life consecration. 

The Grange also has an important responsibility 
in the improvement of country life. It is often the 

265 



Betterment through Education 

most popular meeting place of farmers, and though it 
sometimes tends to become a gathering simply of one 
race or of one age or one social set, the simplicity and 
practicality of its work make it capable of being a real 
forum of rural discussions and a laboratory of co-oper- 
ative effort. One woman, "Mother" Mayo of Michi- 
gan, a leader in the Grange and in all the higher 
movements of country life, caught a vision of the pos- 
sibilities for womanhood and childhood in the coun- 
try. She first emancipated herself from bondage in 
her own rural situation and then went up and down 
the state preaching simply and persuasively the re- 
demption that is possible just where one happens to 
be. As the result, a larger life in the - Grange, the 
multiplication of reading circles and the opening of 
the state agricultural college for homemaking courses 
for women became her monument. 

It is especially in the direction of making country 
life more attractive and wholesome to boys and girls 
that both the church and the Grange have their oppor- 
tunity. In a small isolated community in New Hamp- 
shire, where there were two Granges and there was one 
small church, the attitude of the leaders of the town 
toward the recreations of young people was simply 
that of repression. The church opposed card-playing 
and dancing, but suggested no substitute whatever. 
The result was that the young people conducted every 
winter a season of unchaperoned dancing parties, their 
social intercourse was entirely unregulated, and during 
the year, in this community almost totally American, 
one-third of the births were illegitimate. In another 

266 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

community, not much larger, in Massachusetts, where 
the circumstances might have been similar, the church 
took the leadership in organizing a dancing school, 
conducted by a teacher of irreproachable character. 
Dancing parties were formally held, opening at eight 
and closing at eleven, attended by old and young. 
The morality and intelligence of this community were 
notably high. A very large share of the credit must 
be given for a more favorable result to the church 
which saw a need and was strong enough to meet it. 

Up in Newaygo and Oceana Counties in Michi- 
gan some parent-teacher associations were started, un- 
der the auspices of which the farmers, their children 
and their instructors got together in the schoolhouses, 
discussed their mutual problems and relieved the mo- 
notony of their life with social meetings. The effects 
of these meetings became so far-reaching that the name 
"Hesperia movement" has been given to them, and 
they have been imitated widely. Schoolhouses have 
anciently been used for religious services. Sometimes 
they are used for dancing parties, conducted well or ill 
according to the temper of the neighborhood. 

Mr. Myron T. Scudder has written a pamphlet ad- 
vocating the development of play festivals in rural 
regions, to be conducted under the auspices of the 
leaders in the community, the school teachers, minis- 
ters, the county Y. M. C. A. secretary and the best 
citizens. These festivals and play-picnics are prepared 
for many weeks in advance, and when established be- 
come an annual institution. They are attractive to old 
as well as to young, and they call together almost the 

267 



Betterment through Education 

entire population. They are usually conducted upon 
the school grounds, have both competitive and non- 
competitive games, calisthenics and athletic exhibi- 
tions, sports in which adults and non-athletic people 
may take part, exhibits of school work, manual train- 
ing and fine arts, something perhaps of a dramatic 
character, and sometimes concessions for the sale of 
refreshments and non-intoxicants, which may help 
meet the moderate expenses. Such gatherings are of 
inestimable value, not only as an antidote to the vul- 
garity of the average country fair, but as a better op- 
portunity for the close coming together of all the 
people in the expressions of joy and play. 

The country school and schoolhouse must be 
socialized. One unfortunate feature of the closing of 
district schools has been the removal from scattered 
hamlets of the only building suitable for community 
purposes. The country schoolhouse should be open 
for all sorts of worthy community purposes. It is 
feasible to make it the meeting-place not only of the 
Grange and the farmers' club, but also of well-con- 
ducted boys' and girls' clubs. It may contain a ham- 
let library and be the center of the exchange of the 
best current magazines. In Indiana alone thirty thou- 
sand children annually read the half dozen books of 
a Young Peoples' Reading Course, selected by the 
educational authorities and sold at cost to country chil- 
dren and to rural school libraries. The festivals of 
the school should be community festivals and intended 
not only to interest but even to instruct adults, and 
the country school teacher as well as the country min- 

268* 



The Beautiful Ordering of Life 

ister should be distinctly prepared for their great and 
important functions. 

REFERENCES 

THE CITY 

"The Improvement of Towns and Cities," by Charles 
Mulford Robinson. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
1907. On city planning. 

"American Municipal Progress, " by Charles Zueblin. 
New York: The Macmillan Co., 1902. Touches on rec- 
reations, public museums, libraries, etc. 

"The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," by Jane 
Addams. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1909. The 
most sympathetic study of the perils and needs of city 
youth. 

"Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy," by Joseph 
Lee. New York: The MacmillanCo., 1902. Well written 
chapters on baths, gymnasiums, playgrounds, boys' clubs, 
outings and vacation schools. 

"Euthenics: The Science of Controllable Environment," 
by Ellen H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb and Barrows, 
1910. "Eugenics is hygiene for the coming generation. 
Euthenics is hygiene for the present generation." 

"The Religious Possibilities of the Motion Picture," 
by Herbert A. Jump. New Britain: The Author, 1911. 

"The Dance Problem," by Mrs. Charles Henry Israels 
in The Playground for October, 1910. New York: The 
Playground Association of America. 

THE COUNTRY 

"Chapters in Rural Progress," and "The Country 
Church and the Rural Problem, ' ' by Kenyon L. Butterfield. 
19 269 



Betterment through Education 

The first, Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1908; the 
• second, New York: The Association Press, 1910. 

' 'The American Rural School,' ' by Harold W. Foght. 
New York: The Macmillan Co., 1910. A broad study of 
the rural school. 

' 'Among Country Schools, " by O. J. Kern. Boston: 
Ginn and Co., 1906. A particular study, based on the 
author's wide experience. 

Rural Manhood, a magazine, published monthly by The 
Association Press, New York. 

"The Field Day and Play Picnic for Country Chil- 
dren," by Myron T. Scudder. New York: The Charities 
Publication Committee, 1908* 



XXIV 

A CHILD EDUCATING HIMSELF 

WE spoke of education as interference with the 
child's own process of self-education. There 
will not be room nor need in this book to at- 
tempt to discover and describe the ways in which a 
child reacts upon the educational influences imposed 
by adults. The purpose of this short chapter is to 
mention some of the ways outside the school by which 
the child instinctively improves himself. 

One of these methods is through sociability. The 
child is an animated question mark, and wherever he 
goes he is comprehending his environment by asking 
questions of those who are older. He accumulates a 
disordered mass of facts which stimulate his interests 
in school and direct his reading. A child much ear- 
lier than we suppose learns the reference-book habit 
and knows how to extract from a book of information, 
by pointed research and judicious skipping, the essen- 
tial things which he wishes to know. The sociability 
of a child takes the form of discipleship with adults, 
but of comradeship with those of his own years. In 
the chapter upon "The Gang" we have indicated how 
deep-reaching and various are the influences upon the 
child's opinions and conduct, caused by his relation- 
ships with his plavmates. We may again assert that 

271 



Betterment through Education 

in this social self-education of childhood is the seat of 
all neighborliness, power of co-operation, civic inter- 
est and willingness to be of social service. 

The child educates himself also when he is alone. 
The child's room is a very important factor in this 
education. It represents privacy, opportunity for 
meditation, the expression of his sense of beauty 
through decoration and the opportunity to make col- 
lections. Studies that have been made of the collect- 
ing instinct of children show that the fever begins at 
about six, is at its height at ten, and among boys les- 
sens after fourteen. Some of these collections, such 
as of cigarette pictures and cigar bands, seem to be 
quite aimless, except as expressions of the desire to 
accumulate a multitude of specimens of similar ob- 
jects, but the rage for stamps, pictures and objects 
from nature is usually prophetic of scientific interests. 
If a child can be furnished with tools and suggestions 
he will often, alone or aided by a chosen chum, carry 
these collections to the point where they become of real 
value, fall into simple classification and furnish train- 
ing for agility, for skill of the hands. Pets, too, if 
there is room for them and they are properly tended, 
have an influence in developing the affectionate side 
of a child's nature. 

The encouragement of a boy or a girl to have an 
account-book and to engage in small financial deal- 
ings is valuable not simply because it helps toward 
future thrift, but because of the variety of education 
thus involved. The boy who works by the hour for 
his parents, who tends a garden, who keeps hens, who 

272 






A Child Educating Himself 

has a newspaper route, finds it necessary to use fore- 
sight, self-control and industry, to be accurate and to 
get along with other people. A small but increasing 
financial independence in regard to one's own pur- 
chases and pleasures is the surest help to self-mastery 
and the learning of the measure of values that can 
possibly be applied. 

Probably the most valuable part of a child's self- 
education is his opportunity to learn from making 
mistakes. This is that which the institutional child 
misses. While the wise parent wants his child's train- 
ing to be as inexpensive to himself and to others as 
possible, he learns that this inexpensiveness is best se- 
cured by allowing some errors to occur in the early 
years, when they do not cost much, in such a way as 
to make the child immune to such errors in the later 
years, when they would be very costly. 

The child is educated not only socially but person- 
ally by his relations with his chums. The manage- 
ment of his baseball team or the presidency of his in- 
door club will give him a varied discipline which does 
not come in the discipleship of the school or the home. 
It is the most direct and practical preparation possible 
for all of the associations of adult years. 

Probably a word should be said here of the en- 
deavor which many ambitious boys and girls are mak- 
ing to supply their personal deficiencies by taking 
courses in correspondence study. No doubt such 
schools make claims that are extravagant and some- 
times untrue — for instance the depreciation of the value 
of teachers and of guidance in study and of the help 

273 



Betterment through Education 

of the enthusiasm of fellow-students is unjustifiable — 
and the percentage of young people who actually make 
anything out of the material which they buy is said to 
be no more than five, yet the material is there, the 
text-books are often models of simplicity, arrangement 
and practicalness, and the total of young persons who 
have reached industrial preferment or intellectual 
quickening through such studies is large. 

The best part of self-education is digestion, the 
ruminative assimilation of all the experiences, lessons 
and activities of one's life. Hence the importance of 
the child's having room to be alone. Hence the im- 
portance of leisure to think and to understand. 
Hence the importance of a guarded exposure of every 
child to such experiences, lessons and activities as hu- 
man knowledge and love have found to be most 
wholesome for character-making. 



BOOK FOUR 
BETTERMENT THROUGH PREVENTION 

XXV 

THE REGULATION OF CHILD LABOR 

THE evils of child labor are manifest, whether the 
number of children engaged in gainful occupa- 
tions is one million or two millions. "The 
only facts worth remembering in this connection/ y as 
Nearing well says, "are that the child laborers are very 
numerous, and that about one-third of them are girls." 
The essential evil to the child of being put to 
work while he is immature is that his body is still 
plastic and unformed and is not yet prepared to meet 
the physical strains involved. There seems to be a 
general impression, owing to the fact that child labor 
legislation has all focused in an endeavor to prevent 
children under fourteen from working, that the age of 
fourteen marks a safe maturity of physical growth. 
We all know that maturity is not a matter to be meas- 
ured by years. There is a psychological age as well 
as a physical age, but unfortunately scientists are not 
agreed as to sufficient tests for measuring it. One 
physical test, suggested by Mrs. Florence Kelley, is 
that a child should weigh 80 pounds and be 60 inches 

275 



Betterment through Prevention 

in height. The physical evils which child labor pro- 
duces are summed up by Mangold as follows: 

1. Physical development is retarded or entirely stopped. 

2. The muscles remain weak, anemic conditions ensue, 

and nervous excitability results. 

3. Cramping leads . to tuberculosis or insufficient chest 

development. 

4. Certain postures produce lateral curvature of the spine. 

5. Pelvic disorders grow among the girls who are subjected 

to constant standing. 

6. Slow devitalization follows the inhalation of poisonous 

substances. 

7. The child does not develop symmetrically, and deformi- 

ties follow. 

8. In night work all the bad conditions of the day are 

aggravated. 

Educators emphasize the loss of play as being a 
wrong committed upon the child by labor, equal in 
importance to its effect upon his physical development. 
They are claiming that the very existence of youth is 
due to the necessity for play, that it is the most expres- 
sive form of action, giving growth both in power to 
do and power to appreciate. They insist that long youth 
means long life, and that "civilization is the result of 
man's having been young." "The working child at 
first has no time for play; then he forgets to play; and 
finally he has no desire to play." The monotony of 
the uneducative activities which are possible to a child 
laborer not only stunts his mental growth but it pre- 
disposes him toward restlessness, constant change of 
employment, vagabondage and crime. It is the testi- 

276 



The Regulation of Child Labor 

mony of a leading superintendent of a house of refuge 
that almost all the boys committed to his institution 
were working boys at the time of their arrest or just 
previous to their arrest. 

Economists are beginning to tell us that child labor 
does not pay. Where child labor is prohibited indus- 
tries usually find labor-saving machinery or men to take 
their places, and discover that they can do this with- 
out loss of profit. A well-known manufacturer testi- 
fies, "So far as the economy of production goes, as a 
manufacturer I think we can do without the labor of 
children." Nearing says, "In all industries and in 
all sections thoughtful employers have decided that in 
the long run it is cheaper to invent machinery or to 
employ adult help, and thus replace the children." 
" 'The kids' are unreliable, wasteful, and expensive as 
accident causers." The introduction of children into 
industry makes them the direct competitors of adults, 
and indirectly of their own parents. Sometimes a boy 
will go into a shop and actually displace his own 
father, receiving, of course, not more than half the 
wages. The two serious consequences brought about 
are the displacement of adults and the general lower- 
ing of their wage standards. Regarding the child in 
industry as a factor in general prosperity, the crippling 
of children who do premature labor for trained effort in 
later life brings a serious loss to the vital assets of a na- 
tion. The Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and 
Technical Education states that "The child commenc- 
ing work at sixteen overtakes his brother beginning at 
fourteen in less than two years." The additional two 

277 



Betterment through Prevention 

years of school work would increase his earning power 
and his consequent value to the commonwealth. Care- 
ful figures have been gathered by Mr. E. W. Weaver 
of the Brooklyn Public Schools, which show that every 
additional year of technical preparation adds an amount 
every day more than equal to a good day's wages al- 
most immediately to the earning power of the child. 
The cost of the crime which is the direct result of 
child labor is also a tax to the community. Dr. James 
M. Brittain states that at the present rate "8 per cent, 
of all the children and 12 per cent, of all the boys 
born in Chicago, who live to be ten years of age will 
be brought into the juvenile court as delinquents be- 
fore they are sixteen." We have already said that 
delinquents are almost universally child workers. 

The moral effects of child labor are universally 
acknowledged to be unfortunate. The child becomes 
prematurely independent, financially and otherwise, 
and is indifferent to home restraint. The reaction 
from the drudgery of toil makes him feverish for 
excitement and amusements which are likely to be 
unwholesome and morally dangerous. Some occupa- 
tions, either through association or late hours, directly 
expose children, especially girls, to temptations. They 
are, as Travis calls them, "Harvardsof Crime." The 
complete subservience and lack of initiative in the 
work which children do stunts their developing powers 
of direction, robs them of all sense of fellowship, and 
deprives the nation of the possible enthusiasm which a 
larger life might give toward the great national and 
social ideals. 

278 



The Regulation of Child Labor 

The causes of child labor are summed up by Near- 
ing as follows: "The system of modern industry, with 
its labor-saving appliances, its means of employing 
mechanical power, and its division of labor makes the 
manufacture of cheap goods possible; an insatiable 
public demand for quantity rather than quality leads 
the manufacturer to turn out many things and cheap 
ones; in turning out these cheap goods the manufact- 
urer, through the division of labor and the develop- 
ment of machinery, is enabled to employ children; in 
the competitive industry, if one manufacturer adopts 
a cheap device, the others must do likewise or go 
bankrupt, and thus is created, out of the system of 
competitive industry, the condition which always per- 
mits and at times requires the employment of children. 
Two other factors are equally prominent as causes of 
child labor. They are the moving causes that are ac- 
tively operating to send children to work: 

1. The wages of the average workman are so low 
as to preclude the possibility of his bringing up a 
family without some outside aid. This is often se- 
cured by sending the children to work. 

2. The school system, with its ancient curriculum, 
rigorous discipline and low-paid, inexperienced teach- 
ers, is heartily detested by the average boy, and prob- 
ably by the average girl, who take the first opportu- 
nity to escape from its monotony and confinement, to 
the freedom of work. 

It is these last two causes which Nearing believes 
are more important, and need more immediate atten- 
tion than all the others put together. His testimony 

279 



Betterment through Prevention 

is of special value because he has not only had experi- 
ence as a secretary of a child labor committee, during 
which he worked earnestly for prohibitory legislation, 
but because since then, in the calmer atmosphere of a 
university, he has balanced the enthusiasm of the 
reformer with the broad vision of the scholar. He be- 
lieves that if we can meet and solve the problem of the 
school and the home we shall be able to prevent, by 
means of legislation and in other ways, the demands 
of industry and of the public for the exploitation of 
children. 

Concerning the necessity of poverty, which drives 
children to toil, he acknowledges the place of greed 
and laziness on the part of a few parents, who demand 
their children's wages or use the products of their toil 
instead of working themselves, but he believes the 
main cause is that a very large number of day labor- 
ers, especially those with large families, cannot earn 
enough to keep them supplied with the necessaries, 
not to mention the luxuries of life. To meet this 
problem he makes three suggestions: First — the mini- 
mum wage; second, compulsory insurance; and third, 
school feeding. He cites the minimum wage laws of 
New South Wales and of New Zealand, which, through 
local courts, consisting of employers, employes and 
third parties employed by a minimum wage board, 
take testimony and determine a fair minimum wage 
for particular trades. The compulsory insurance 
plan he cites is in successful operation in Germany. 
It provides that no man can, by his incapacity or 
death, plunge his family into poverty, or throw them 

280 



The Regulation of Child Labor 

upon the community for support. The plan of school 
feeding, as a protection for needy families, is in use in 
different parts of Europe. Its disadvantages are ob- 
vious as encouraging pauperism, but the principle be- 
hind it is the obvious one "that children must be fed." 
It is claimed that the physical and mental development 
of children whose morning meals are provided by the 
State is sufficiently great and rapid to meet its econo- 
mic cost. Still further steps in the protection of the 
men of to-morrow, which have already been tried, are 
scholarships for poor children and pensions for labor- 
ing mothers, but Nearing believes the greatest cause 
of child labor is the inefficiency of the public schools. 
In this he is supported by many investigators. A 
study was made a short time ago of 666 children who 
had left school, 580 of whom claimed that they had 
left because of poverty. The actual circumstances 
were carefully investigated, and it was found out that 
with 390 of them this was a mere pretext. The actual 
reason was, the children were bored. The indictment 
brought against the school is that it forces children of 
diverse temperaments and capacities through a single 
and narrowly planned curriculum, which has little 
relation to the interests and needs of the person and 
offers no preparation for the actual future of the child. 
Especially does the school work fail in manual expres- 
sion, which is demanded by all motor-minded children, 
and in the relation of the course to the industries and 
activities toward which the child is looking. The 
child who is in school has only one choice before him, 
while the child who goes to work seems to have an 

281 



Betterment through Prevention 

infinite variety of choices before him. The child, 
especially of the day laborer, is brought face to face 
with the problem of subsistence earlier than the child 
of the well-to-do and middle classes. Down in the 
sixth grade, before he is legally allowed to enter into 
gainful occupations, he begins to survey his possible 
sphere of activity. The school fails to reveal to him 
any larger opportunities than those suggested by im- 
mediate and unskilled employment, but the prospect 
of immediate spending money, or liberation from 
repressive discipline, and escape perhaps from incom- 
petent teachers, makes him glad to enter the world of 
toil at the first opportunity. Though he may find his 
experiences as a worker disillusioning, the probability 
is that the parent who may have opposed his first plan 
of going to work insists that having left school he 
shall continue as a toiler. Nearing therefore raises the 
question whether if children are merely prevented 
from work by negative legislation they are any better 
off than otherwise. Is it probable that they will 
return to the school? Is it not more likely that they 
will simply remain wild upon the streets? 

Coupled with the prohibition of factory work there 
should evidently be legislation requiring school at- 
tendance. A complete program for the regulation of 
child labor will follow up this merely negative legisla- 
tion by a positive endeavor to make possible for 
parents as well as children such a possession of the 
necessaries of life and some access to its luxuries as 
shall make possible and cause to seem desirable the 
remaining of children in school until they shall be 

282 



The Regulation of Child Labor 

equipped to become efficient members of the commu- 
nity. The greatest reform necessary is such a recasting 
of the school work, especially in the secondary grades, 
as shall make the child want the school, persuade the 
parents of its value and finish an adequate vocational 
training. The subject of vocational training has been 
considered in another chapter. 

One other aspect of the relation of a child to labor 
is usually neglected by those who are interested in the 
subject. This is the question of the employment of 
children's leisure. It is possible that the leisure of 
children may be as mischievous as their labor. We 
have already spoken of the unfortunate influences of 
street life, which especially of course affect school chil- 
dren in their after-school hours. The same problem, 
especially in cities where there are one-session schools, 
is keenly felt by well-to-do parents also. The prob- 
lem of the summer vacation is a serious one, intellec- 
tually, socially and morally. Figures show that the 
acme of child crime is in thg summer, while the acme 
of adult crime is in February, clearly indicating that 
while want drives adults to crime, it is idleness which 
gets children into trouble. It is the testimony of 
school-teachers that the first fortnight of school-life in 
the fall is largely wasted with children who have lain 
fallow all summer. The playground for poor children 
and the paid camp and summer travel for children 
of the well-to-do do not quite meet this problem, 
which we are beginning to appreciate. Many of us 
parents are realizing that our older children get 
nearly enough play in the winter, and that they need 

283 



Betterment through Prevention 

the discipline of experience and the practical relation 
to money which may come from work during the long 
summer vacation. There is some slight recognition 
of this need in summer camps for boys and girls, 
where some co-operation is required in the work of the 
camp. An interesting endeavor to supply this need is 
seen in the camp conducted by the Interlaken School 
at La Porte, Ind., where the boys engage in farm 
work and construction, and some financial allowance is 
made for the fruits of their toil. Mr. E. W. Weaver 
has for a number of summers helped boys to go up 
among the farmers of Dutchess County, N. Y., and 
pick apples, and an arrangement has been made, under 
the auspices of the New York Teachers' Association, 
by which high-school boys and girls may chaperon 
young children to Coney Island and the city parks, thus 
removing the children from the streets and relieving 
their mothers and enabling these young people to earn 
some money toward prosecuting their education. The 
practical difficulty which many parents find in securing 
temporary occupation for their children during the 
summer is that the work which they can secure is so 
monotonous and so little educative in character that it 
disgusts these young people with work and robs them 
of zest for any employment. It would seem to be 
practicable to inaugurate a system of work camps, in 
which there should be the simple life, some opportu- 
nity for play and the spirit of fellowship in outdoor 
labor which should be somewhat. lucrative in character. 
The employment of children in berry-picking and 
other agricultural pursuits, involving the strain of 

284 



The Regulation of Child Labor 

work from daylight to dark, has no doubt its abuses, 
but there is at least the sunshine and the out-of-door 
life and the fellowship, and it is possible that the advo- 
cates of the abolition of child labor have not always 
been able to see this other side of the case. Our na- 
tional Commissioner of Education has recently urged 
that farm and garden plots be worked by school chil- 
dren under school direction, as a part of their educa- 
tion, to fill their leisure profitably and to help enable 
them secure higher education. 

REFERENCES 

The broadest treatment of this subject is in "The Solu- 
tion of the Child Labor Problem, ' ' by Scott Nearing. New 
York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1911. 

The National Child Labor Committee, New York, has 
many instructive leaflets. 



20 



XXVI 

THE JUVENILE COURT 

THE Juvenile Court is the modern endeavor to 
secure a "square deal" for boys and girls. It 
is based upon the rather modern realization that 
a child is not a criminal, though he may be an offender, 
but a plastic being in an undeveloped stage, extremely 
sensitive to his environment, and capable even after he 
has made mistakes of being restored to a normal and 
self-controlled moral life. The development of mod- 
ern preventive and reformative methods of dealing 
with delinquent children was suggested by some 
pathetic and outrageous instances of severe and fruitless 
punishment which, under the old criminal jurispru- 
dence, were visited in different places in our country 
upon young children. There was also growing up the 
gradual recognition that a jail not only keeps safely 
the young people whom it imprisons but also brings 
them back regularly, and that the punitive methods 
become directly a school of crime. Not only was it 
evidently an injustice to regard an immature young 
person, ignorant of moral distinctions, as fully respon- 
sible for criminal acts, but it was also seen that those 
acts were the direct result of evil environment, were 
often suggested by adults, and that the confinement of 
children in almshouses and jails, in close contact with 

286 



The Juvenile Court 



adult depravity, was often worse than the absolute dis- 
regard of their mischievous or malicious acts. 

Further study showed that not only are delinquent 
children not criminal, but that they are seldom abnor- 
mal. Between 90 and 98 per cent, of children who 
have been brought before the courts have been found to 
be normal. Even judges and court officers began to see 
that the acts for which children were committed, and 
the instincts which caused them to be performed, were 
the same wholesome and innocent ones which they 
themselves had shared when they were boys, and that 
nearly all the deeds for which boys and girls were 
brought before the courts were of the sort of which 
the majority of people who are out of jail have many 
times been guilty. The gradual development of 
sympathetic methods in the administration of courts 
where children appeared was fostered by a careful 
study of the causes which brought them to court. 
These causes are now pretty well understood, and are 
as follows: 

Chiefly it is realized that city conditions are to 
blame for the illegal activities of children. Of 130,- 
000 boys and girls in reformatories it was discovered 
that 98 per cent, came from cities. What is play in 
the country is generally crime in the city, and more 
than 50 per cent, of the cases of child delinquency may 
be classified as "misdirected play." 

The play instinct is known to be the most uni- 
versal, the most important and on the whole the most 
wholesome instinct of childhood. The new education 
is based upon this instinct, child-study secures most of 

287 



Betterment through Prevention 

its facts from its exercise. When cities become con- 
gested so that the only spaces for the exercise of that 
instinct, which occupies all the activities of a child 
that are not spent in eating and sleeping, are the 
paved streets, and it is one of the prime duties of the 
police force to prevent such exercise, the situation be- 
comes not only critical but illogical and unfair. The 
boy who lives down town is haled into court for pre- 
cisely those innocent activities which are the chief 
element in the strength, the agility and the alertness 
of his cousin who lives in the suburbs. It has been 
remarked that boys and girls begin to be brought be- 
fore the courts in largest numbers at just those years 
when they are beginning to develop individuality. 
When we understand that individuality is chiefly 
developed by play, we face the incongruous situation 
that the children are arrested for pursuing that course 
of conduct which more than any other was intended to 
develop their characters. 

Not only is the street the city child's playground, 
but street life itself is one of the chief instruments of 
his depravity. The down-town streets are lined with 
cheap and often unwholesome places of amusements. 
The saloons are the gathering places of the populace, 
and are often frequented by children. The street 
trades, especially those which are plied at night, bring 
the children into intimate contact with temptation and 
vice, and the development of the street "gang," which 
is one of the results of another wholesome instinct of 
youth, that for making friendship, tends to become 
the mob-spirit, in which the individual, uninstructed 

288 



The juvenile Court 



and of weak will, is led into courses of conduct which 
he would not otherwise initiate nor have the strength 
to accomplish. 

It is in such environment, where the seclusion and 
the sanctity of the home are maintained with the greatest 
difficulty, that the break-down of the home most often 
occurs. The father, worn out by long hours of labor, 
and the mother, jaded by her house- work tasks, are in 
no condition when night comes, either to make their 
unattractive shelter a center of social intercourse for 
each other or of delight for their children. The ten- 
dency is for the whole family to be upon the streets, 
the parents in the saloons and the children disregarded 
and unguided. It is in these crowded regions also 
that the foreign population invariably gathers. Here 
we meet that curious and distressing condition which 
disrupts homes that in the old country were cen- 
ters of idyllic fellowship. The quick-witted children 
have easily learned our language and have become 
Americans, while the parents are still aliens. It is an 
unwholesome thing for a child to know more than his 
father or mother, and the contempt which a foreign- 
born child feels for the ignorance or apparent stupidity 
of his parents is not a guarantee of good family dis- 
cipline. 

The proportion of children of native-born parents, 
who reach the juvenile courts is, however, surprisingly 
large. In some cities more American than foreign 
children are delinquents. The explanation, no doubt, 
is that which Mr. R. R. Reeder gives, that "There is 
just as much authority in the American home as ever 

289 



Betterment through Prevention 

— only that it has changed hands." In the American 
home, especially where there is not sore poverty, the 
cause of delinquency in children is, without question, 
the flabbiness and slovenliness of parents in training 
their children to obedience and to orderly habits. 

If the situation of the child who has an ignorant 
or alien parentage is unfortunate, how much more 
deplorable is that of those who are orphans or half- 
orphans. Over 50 per cent, of children who face the 
juvenile court are without one or both parents, and 
the proportion of children of illegitimate birth who 
are delinquents is in all countries very large. There 
is always a large number who come from homes that 
have been rent by divorce or where the father has 
deserted his family. It is also notable that the num- 
ber of commitments of children from abnormally large 
families is disproportionately great, because in such 
households the welfare of the children cannot be ade- 
quately looked after. The failure of the home % is 
regarded by students of the subject as the greatest con- 
tributing cause toward child delinquency. While the 
home as an institution is sacred, it is coming to be felt 
that a parent has no right to impose hurtful conditions 
upon his child simply because it is his own, and that it 
is not morally just that a child should be committed to 
an indeterminate sentence in a non-functionary home. 

The relation of child labor to delinquency is plain. 
When a child is removed from school before he is fitted 
for any calling, and is used almost as a part of the ma- 
chinery of a great industrial plant, he is likely either 
to be thrown out upon the scrap heap of the world at 

290 



The Juvenile Court 



an early age, unready for any productive employment, 
or else, weary and discouraged, to be peculiarly ex- 
posed in his few hours of recreation to the tempta- 
tions of his neighborhood. Here certainly is one of 
our most appealing cases of social injustice. 

The public school is also to be blamed for some 
share in juvenile delinquency. If it be true that 98 
per cent, of juvenile arrests are the direct cause of 
misdirected energy, then we may fairly ask the school- 
teacher why he has not found some way of directing 
such energy into safer channels. He may respond 
that his failure is due to the fact that so large a pro- 
portion of the children of the community leave school 
before he has completed his task with them, while, 
however, he is usually frank to acknowledge that, 
with the rest, the school has not yet fully met its 
opportunity. 

A good many boys are captured by the police be- 
cause they like the adventure of being chased. It is 
the spirit of adventure which leads them into all their 
depredations. It is the ancestral nomad instinct which 
causes them to play truant. The school as an institu- 
tion for sitting still has not fully recognized how cen- 
tral is this vagabond instinct in boys and girls under 
fourteen. It has been said, with some justice, that a 
child has to be committed to a corrective institution 
in order to learn some things which ought to be every 
child's birthright. The schools which develop indi- 
vidual instincts by a variety of manual training and 
break up the "lock-step" in education are a direct 
antidote to delinquency. 

291 



Betterment through Prevention 

After all that has been said about the external 
influences which lead boys and girls into wrong 
courses, something is left in the child himself to be 
explained. Many of these children, through the pov- 
erty or ignorance of their parents, are unnourished. 
They are physically weak. The so-called "criminal 
type" is not one that is marked by physical malfor- 
mations so much as by undevelopment. While, as I 
have said, the proportion of abnormal children who 
are delinquents is small, still the character of the de- 
fects which have been found is often serious. Of 
3, 122 children examined in the Chicago court, between 
August, 1907, and December, 1908, 7 per cent, were 
found to be affected with cardiac diseases and 5 per 
cent, with pulmonary diseases. Defective hearing 
was found in 18 percent and defective vision in 17 
per cent, while hypertrophic tonsils and other throat 
troubles were discovered in 5 5 per cent. Among 5 8 
children in the Chicago Detention Home, at one time 
only five had good teeth and only four had ever used 
a toothbrush. There were a total of 203 decayed 
teeth among the 58 children. Some, of these diseases 
were not serious, and they are found in a larger pro- 
portion than most of us suppose among what we call 
"normal" children, but these facts are not to be disre- 
garded. 

If it be true, as Dr. Hastings H. Hart tells us, 
that "more than one-half the children committed to 
institutions are found to be fit subjects for the physi- 
cian and the surgeon," then we certainly need in every 
juvenile court the court physician as much as the 

292 



The Juvenile Court 



judicial officer. One very important and delicate mat- 
ter is that of the examination of girls for symptoms of 
venereal disease. Most girls who are committed by a 
court have had an immoral experience. For the pro- 
tection of society, for the just provision and protection 
and treatment of the girl herself, such diseases ought 
to be discovered, yet such examinations are not re- 
garded as legal unless they are voluntarily acceded to. 
The importance of the physical examination of each 
child who is brought before the courts is now being 
generally recognized. A considerable number of 
feeble-minded, idiotic and epileptic children are also 
discovered upon examination, and a few who may be 
distinctly classed as " moral perverts." 

More serious, however, than physical abnormalities 
are the moral abnormalities of delinquents. Many of 
the children examined by the judge are found to have 
a curious and individual philosophy of life. Sometimes 
it has been acquired from criminal or ignorant parents. 
Often it represents the moral sentiment of the block. 
Sometimes it has been gathered from the nickel shows 
and the yellow newspapers, and in general it repre- 
sents the terrible result which we are approaching in a 
nation where public education regards almost all the 
needs of the children of the State except moral nurture. 

Mangold classifies delinquent children as the 
morally weak, the nomad child, the disobedient truant 
and the incorrigible. The first of these are morally 
neutral and almost completely plastic; the second and 
third classes have usually suffered from parental cruelty, 
and are impressed with a heavier stamp of evil; while 

293 



Betterment through Prevention 

the incorrigibles are already upon the brink of a crimi- 
nal career. Dr. G. Stanley Hall has classified the 
offenses of children as follows: He finds that children 
of thirteen years and under are arrested chiefly for 
truancy; that fourteen is the criminal age for incorrigi- 
bility and malicious instinct; that fifteen is the age 
when petty larcency, disorderly conduct and assault 
are most prevalent; that sixteen reveals the more 
mature offenses when the youth is copying the vices 
of adults; and that at seventeen sexual criminality is a 
frequent evil. The statements of Mangold and Hall 
are consistently parallel with each other. They sug- 
gest progressive gradation of inclination toward evil, of 
the weakening of the good will, and consequently the 
very different needs of these successive periods. The 
children in the earlier stages of progress toward wrong 
need moral education, the inspiration of noble compan- 
ionship and a wholesome environment. In the years 
of increasing delinquency there is still greater need of 
a better environment, often involving the removal of 
the child entirely from his home, and the substitution 
of entirely different influences in his life. Of the 
morally weak and neutral children it may be said that 
a good home is about all they need; of those who are 
maliciously mischievous that often a good farm school 
is desirable; while those who are incorrigibly bad will 
require the institution. 

The basal requirement in the establishment of a 
good juvenile court is a good law regarding juvenile 
delinquency. Such a law should recognize the new 
attitude toward the children, and should definitely 

294 



The Juvenile Court 



establish the court with its paid officers, its detention 
home and its probation and parole. Of equal im- 
portance are regulations concerning contributory delin- 
quency. Judge Lindsey enumerates these essentials as 
follows: "Acts enabling the judge to deal freely with 
the delinquent and dependent children; and to hold 
parents or adult agents responsible for the offenses of 
their wards; acts holding fathers accountable for the 
support, care and maintenance of their offspring; 
statutes providing for the punishment of cruelty to 
children; co-operation between school and court offi- 
cials, by which all these laws are enforced in one court 
having power to deal with every aspect of the situation 
before one judge; with a set of paid officials for the 
enforcement of the law; the administrative work with 
delinquents as well as for them; and the co-operation 
of these children with the court." 

The central figure in the court, of course, is the 
judge. The requirements of character and ability for 
this officer are most difficult and unusual. His func- 
tions are not only judicial but paternal. He is State 
father to the children who come before him, and he 
acts as the administrative officer of a system which 
regards the boys and girls who are brought to his atten- 
tion, as partly unfortunate, partly weak, and partly 
undetermined in character. In the earlier days of 
juvenile courts it was customary to set apart a judge of 
circuit or probate court to act as juvenile judge, and 
sometimes a number of judges occupied this function 
in turn. Of late, however, the establishment of sepa- 
rate courts for children has brought with them the 

295 



Betterment through Prevention 

creation of separate judgeships, and men are being 
appointed or elected whose one work is the care of 
delinquent children. One difficulty with the secur- 
ing of competent juvenile judges has been the fear on 
the part of those elected that their professional future 
would be imperiled by accepting such positions. This 
fear has been allayed, however, in some cities by 
making the salaries of such judges equal to those of 
judicial officers of the highest courts. The best of 
service can scarcely be expected from juvenile judges 
who are busy with ambitions for preferment into other 
courts. The juvenile judge must feel a pride in his 
work and recognize the need of long experience and 
preparation for it. While in recent years he is more 
dependent for his facts upon the reports of probation 
officers, he must still, in order to execute justice and 
mercy, be able to measure the value of such reports. 
He must keep close to the perils and temptations of 
child-life in his own city, and have sympathetic con- 
tact with all the philanthropies of that city which may 
contribute to the welfare of the children with whom 
he deals. It is essential both that his election shall be 
removed from the realm of partisan politics, and that 
his work shall be done without rigor and without sen- 
timentality. Both the judge who extorts tears from 
every young offender and the one who sheds tears 
himself under all circumstances are incapacitated for 
competent service. 

The court-room of the model juvenile judge resem- 
bles a business office rather than a court-room. The 
demand for publicity in even these informal proceed- 

296 



The Juvenile Court 



ings seems to be a fair one, and while there is some 
danger that a curious throng may be attracted when a 
case involves indelicate details, it is usually possible 
for the judge to prevent such cases being anticipated, 
and as his examinations are conducted in a low tone of 
voice, those who listen for mere curiosity get little 
reward for their pains. On the other hand, the 
parents, kindred and friends of the child have free 
opportunity to see that justice is being done, and vol- 
unteer social workers are enabled to gather facts which 
may help them in further efforts for the child. 

"The effort," says Hart, "is not to establish guilt, 
but to ascertain a condition. Is the child in the con- 
dition of delinquency ?" 

An officer of even greater importance than the 
judge himself is the probation officer. These men 
and women in the earlier days of the juvenile court 
were largely volunteers, but this work is too important 
to be done by any but trained and dependable people, 
and everywhere now the court system involves at least 
two probation officers — a man and a woman. These 
officers have two functions — investigation before the 
court examination, and parole afterward. Sometimes 
the two duties are performed, in the case of an indi- 
vidual child, by one person, and sometimes by two. 
Two different methods of assigning probation officers 
for their work are in existence — the method of districts 
and the method of specialization. In the former case 
the officer takes a definite portion of the city and han- 
dles all kinds of cases of delinquency which appear in 
that district. The advantage of this method is that 

297 



Betterment through Prevention 

the officer learns to know the moral perils and tempta- 
tions of that district very thoroughly, and is able to 
suggest needed preventive measures which shall apply 
to his whole district. The advantage of specializa- 
tion, however, is that the probation officer, dealing 
only with a special race or particular kind of criminal 
action, gets a sympathetic and experienced contact with 
such cases, and thus becomes a specialist in the reform 
of individuals. He is not, of course, so familiar, 
however, with the particular causes which lead indi- 
viduals with whom he deals into wrong courses. The 
method of specialization needs to be supplemented, at 
least, by frequent conferences of the probation officers 
from all the districts of the city. 

The investigations of a probation officer include a 
survey of all the facts which can have any possible 
bearing upon the individual case. Especially must 
the officer be acquainted with the home, the play 
opportunities, the school standing, and as far as pos- 
sible the personal temperament and character of the 
child. With these facts concerning the individual 
there should be coupled, for the information of the 
judge, the results of a physical examination of the 
child, undertaken for the purpose of discovering any 
abnormalities or weaknesses which home investigation 
has not revealed. 

The work of parole involves a report to the judge, 
through the parole officer, of the actions of the child 
in his home and on the street, of his school standing, 
or if he be employed, of the satisfaction he gives to his 
employer. It also implies that the parole officer has 

298 



The Juvenile Court 



endeavored to relate the child more helpfully to his 
pastor or priest, to the social instrumentalities of his 
neighborhood, and when 'possible to some wholesome 
adult friend. 

Another official who has close relations with the 
juvenile court is the truant officer. He is usually dis- 
tinct from the probation officer, and is often a police- 
man. In many cities it is being felt that the truant 
officer should at least receive his instructions from the 
school superintendent, rather than from police head- 
quarters. In Chicago thirty policemen in plain clothes 
report daily to the chief probation officer. It seems 
hardly necessary to stigmatize the mere truant by hav- 
ing him reported by an officer in blue coat and brass 
buttons, and the possibilities of regaining the child's 
interest in education by assigning him to some special 
school or meeting his nomad instincts in some other 
way are so great that men, not in uniform and inspired 
by the educational rather than the punitive ideal can 
often prevent truants being reported to the juvenile 
court at all. In St. Louis and Cleveland a child is not 
regarded as a delinquent until the compulsory school 
attendance department has exhausted all its resources 
with the child. In some cities admonitory letters 
from the heads of local police stations concerning chil- 
dren who are likely to get into trouble do a great deal 
of good in strengthening the hands of home discipline 
and preventing ^a police court appearance. There is 
much room for improvement in the training of police- 
men toward a more sympathetic and enlightened at- 
titude to childhood. Some of these men, tender- 

299 



Betterment through Prevention 

hearted and wise and themselves fathers of children, 
are true but unrecognized benefactors of the cities 
which they serve. It would seem possible to discern 
in the police force men who are naturally adapted for 
the guardianship of children, just as it is to find men 
who are adapted to become detectives. Such men 
should receive some special training and be inspired 
with the thought that it is just as important to protect 
children as it is to catch thieves. 

Department store detectives are glad to co-operate 
with this plan of keeping the child away from the 
court as long as possible by reporting petty thieving 
by children directly to the truant officer or the proba- 
tion officer and giving an admonition before arrest for 
a first offence. 

After the work of the paid probation and truant 
officers has been done, there is still plenty of room for 
volunteer social effort. Here comes in the parish 
priest or sister, and among Protestants the "Big 
Brother Movement." These men and women, un- 
salaried, accept the care of from one to three children 
who have been before the court, endeavor to gain their 
confidence and affection, relate them to the church, 
the social settlement or the gymnasium, act as counsel- 
ors to them regarding their employment, their asso- 
ciates and their play, and become as far as they may 
what the older brother is to the younger ones in the 
home. There is danger, of course, of this work being 
done sentimentally and spasmodically, but too much 
of it cannot be undertaken, and it is estimated that 
not more than three persons of a hundred of those 

300 



The Juvenile Court 



who have received such brotherly or sisterly help ever 
appear again before the juvenile court. 

An essential institution in connection with the 
juvenile court in every large city is a detention home. 
Some children may be safely retained in their own 
homes, provided they be decent ones, while awaiting 
trial. Good country houses are sometimes accepted 
as boarding places for these young offenders. In 
other places, matrons may be found in charge of lodg- 
ing houses, who make it their specialty to board and 
give kindly care to a limited number of children, 
while they are being detained. The detention home, 
when provided by law, ought evidently not to be too 
magnificent nor luxurious. The child should not be 
treated so much better than he is accustomed to be that 
he shall regard his detention as a species of reward. In 
some cities there is a plain house, without bars, where 
the boys or girls assist a wise and kindly matron in 
house work, perhaps take care of a garden, and con- 
tinue their school work in this building. Some- 
times the young people under detention are sent to a 
nearby public school, but there is manifest advantage 
in having a special school for such children, even for 
the few days they are under observation, in charge of 
the most alert and successful teacher who may be se- 
cured, in order that she may make a most careful study 
of each child, and may, during these days of the 
child's mental suspense and possible penitence, apply 
the strongest mental and moral motives possible. 
The days of detention ought to include some hours 
of solitary meditation, plenty of employment, and 
21 301 



Betterment through Prevention 

association with the best and not the worst of hu- 
manity. 

A still further method of volunteer help to these 
delinquent children is experienced in the formation of 
Juvenile Protective Leagues. These organizations do 
a different work, dependent upon the local necessities. 
In some cities they furnish volunteer probation officers 
and friends for the children. In most cases they 
give special attention to the girls, sometimes providing 
them with special detention homes or refuges, and 
working to protect these young and innocent children 
against dangerous men and vicious neighborhood in- 
fluences and conditions. They sometimes find it 
necessary to contribute toward the support of the court 
in its earlier stages, perhaps paying the salary of the 
first probation officer. Through various committees 
they touch and help all the weak places in the work of 
the court. One of the most useful things which they 
could accomplish would be to assist the vocational 
direction of well-meaning boys and girls who have left 
the custody of the court and are ready now for guid- 
ance as to their future. A few of these conduct suc- 
cessful employment bureaus that advertise in the daily 
newspapers. 

Says Mr. Henry W. Thurston, the Chief Proba- 
tion Officer of Chicago: "It has been possible for 
the church worker, the truant officer and the school 
teacher to prophesy that the children of certain families 
would develop into delinquents. It is the duty of an 
efficient community to care so well for its truant and 
dependent children from the very moment when such 

302 



The Juvenile Court 



a prophecy can be made that it never will be realized." 
This is a sensible word. It is the next step in juvenile 
reform. In England, as I have mentioned elsewhere, 
the charitable organizations center their attention 
upon such children and give them special training 
and guidance toward an honorable career. Such 
formations, as Horace Mann would say, are worth a 
thousand reformations, and, one might add, are a 
thousandfold cheaper. 

For with all this varied machinery the fact still 
confronts us that the number of juvenile delinquencies 
in all our cities is increasing. This increase is partly 
because the careful probation system brings to light 
more individuals needing the attention of the court 
than was the case when nothing but a police arrest 
would call a child to the court's attention, but the in- 
crease is at least partly accounted for by the undoubted 
fact that society is manufacturing criminals faster than 
it is curing them. Many supplementary methods are 
needed, if the juvenile court system is to work more 
rapidly toward the abolition of delinquency. Play- 
grounds must be multiplied in all the congested dis- 
tricts of our cities. Vacation schools must take the 
endangered children at the end of the school year 
in June, and give them recreation and instruction 
throughout the summer. There must be antidotes 
for the ever-open saloon, the cheap dance hall and the 
noisy street. The public school must be socialized, 
the social settlements, the church gymnasiums and the 
Y. M. C. A. must reach farther down in the social 
scale, and the conditions of child labor must be im- 

303 



Betterment through Prevention 

proved so that neither the strength of boyhood nor the 
charm of girlhood shall be exploited, and so that these 
jaded young people shall not turn from exhausting 
labor to vicious amusements. And no social work 
that can be done will be at all adequate that does not 
touch and improve the non-functionary home. The 
bad home is as sure to deprave the child as the crimi- 
nal associations of the jail. The work of the visiting 
nurse must be supplemented by that of the visiting 
housekeeper, and the parents of delinquent children 
must be taught how to live and to live with their 
children. 

The " block system' ' has been advocated as the 
solution of the problem of anticipating juvenile 
offenses. A volunteer social worker, and perhaps a 
paid city official, is to take charge of a block of city 
houses, to study the moral dangers, the physical inade- 
quacies of the life there, to bring all remedial agencies 
to bear, and especially to provide wholesome friend- 
ship and play for children who are evidently taking 
the first downward steps. Another method of at- 
tempting this result is to obtain from public-school 
teachers, Sunday-school teachers and policemen the 
names of boys and girls who require special attention 
and help, and to endeavor to secure such help for them 
from a nearby church, social settlement or good neigh- 
bor. The variety and persistence of forces working 
for the downfall of boys and girls are terrifying, and 
they can be met only by an equal variety, ingenuity 
and patience of professional and institutional helpful 
methods. 

304 



The Juvenile Court 



REFERENCES 

"Juvenile Courts and What They Have Accomplished, " 
by T. D. Hurley. Chicago: The Visitation and Aid So- 
ciety, 1904. 

"The Problem of the Children and How the State of 
Colorado Cares for Them/" mostly by B. B. Lindsey. 
Denver: The Juvenile Court, 1904. Contains inimitable 
descriptions by this famous judge of his work. 

"Children's Courts in the United States," edited by S. 
J. Barrows. Washington: Government Printing Office, 
1904. 



XXVII 

REFORMATORY METHODS 

EARLY American penology seems to have had a 
theological basis. That basis was the earnest 
belief in human depravity and the full respon- 
sibility of every human soul. The purpose of punish- 
ment for crime was held to be a purpose similar to that 
of the Divine Judge. It was an expression of right- 
eous wrath, and it was a reflection of the Divine ven- 
geance. The length of imprisonment and the treatment 
of the prisoner were gauged by a sincere, but confess- 
edly imperfect effort to fit the punishment to crime. 
We have a relic of this balance of crime and punish- 
ment in the awards of definite sentences by our present 
judges. We have heard the story of the thief who was 
sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years and seven- 
teen days, who responded that he could see where the 
judge got the twenty years, but for the life of him he 
could not discover where he found the seventeen days. 
In its application to the criminal it was an effort to 
intimidate him and his companions from further 
iniquity. These processes were expected to subjugate 
him so far as his evil impulses were concerned, and if 
he were of tender years the place to which he was 
committed, as the term " house of refuge" implied, 
was a solitude in which he was confined as an escape 

306 



Reformatory Methods 



from temptation. The application of justice to chil- 
dren and young people was based upon the same 
principles as its application to adults. The child was 
brought before the same judge and bar. He was 
regarded as depraved and as fully responsible, and while 
the fatherliness of the judge often mitigated the sen- 
tence, the two penalties possible for the young offender 
were a jail in the companionship of hardened crimi- 
nals, or separation from them and from temptation in 
houses of refuge. The classification of prisoners in a 
house of refuge was so imperfect that the associations 
were scarcely more desirable than those of jails. 

The next step in the history of our treatment of 
child offenders was that in which an effort began to be 
made to classify them. At least, the insane and mor- 
bid began to be separated from the responsible, the 
dependents and unfortunates from the delinquents, and 
it began to be seen that graded institutions must be pro- 
vided for those of different ages and degrees of offense. 

Then came the era of graded reformatories. The 
increasing sympathy of the public toward the young 
manifested itself in institutions publicly and pri- 
vately supported and endowed, which were impres- 
sive in size and equipment. The spectacle of regi- 
ments of children, well drilled and docile, all engaged 
in work or play in the buildings or on the grounds, 
satisfied the tender hearts of philanthropists and visi- 
tors. This was the beginning of the endeavor to 
make the punishment fit the offender rather than the 
crime. The methods, however, were those of penalty 
rather than of treatment. There was in these graded 

307 



Betterment through Prevention 

institutions large opportunity for anger, cruelty and 
revenge. After the reformatory era had continued 
long enough for its results to be studied, there came a 
discouraging revelation of the imperfection and fail- 
ure of the old barrack system of dealing with delin- 
quents. The lockstep method of training young 
offenders turned out into the world a generation of 
automatons, docile but helpless, innocent of the condi- 
tions of the world, and usually because of their inex- 
perience unable to take care of themselves, and assured 
their return to the evil associations from which they 
had sprung, destined to a criminal career. 

Then came the modern era. Child study revealed 
to us the complex nature of the child mind and heart. 
The new education reasserted the importance of the 
individual and the individual will, and created one of 
the axioms of pedagogy, which is that each child must 
grow on its own root, developed according to its own 
nature, and be assisted in the evolution of its own 
good will. The relation of malnutrition and physical 
abnormality, evil surroundings and evil example, and 
all the deteriorating influences of city life to child con- 
duct seemed now to be appreciated. It was seen that 
the child was not a criminal, but an unfortunate, that 
he was in the plastic age rather than the stage of 
deliberate evil intention, and that his whole moral per- 
son and moral future depended upon environment, 
nurture and encouragement. The first step then in 
the new treatment of delinquents, first in importance 
and necessity, not in time, was that of prevention. 
Mangold mentions as the essential preventive needs 

308 






Reformatory Methods 



of our modern cities: Juvenile improvement associa- 
tions, clubs for street boys, playgrounds, wholesome 
amusements, contributory delinquent laws, the sociali- 
zation of the school, prevention of truancy, vocational 
training, the prohibition of street trades and the educa- 
tion of parents for parenthood and child-training. The 
care of a class which has been called "borderlanders," 
that is, families existing upon an income which is just 
upon the line of self-support and dependence, by the 
associated charities, so that the child may have a living 
chance — this may be classed as a necessity of preven- 
tion. To these may be added the curfew ordinance 
and the "block system" of supervising the child life 
of crowded centers. These preventive means may be 
summed up in the one phrase, "general civic better- 
ment." It is seen to-day that whatever makes a city 
safer and more wholesome to live in is a more direct 
prevention of crime than all the prisons and reforma- 
tories in the world. 

When the child offender comes before the juvenile 
court judge he is, as we have explained in another 
chapter, exposed to a physical examination. Facts 
are also gathered from every possible source: this 
examination, the truant officer, the probation officer 
and the home and neighborhood, as to the child's 
mental equipment and moral character. All this is 
with the purpose of enabling the judge to make a 
scientific classification of the child, so as to know 
whether he needs medical or surgical treatment, if 
he is an imbecile or idiot or moron, and whether he 
is a first or second or third offender. 

309 



Betterment through Prevention 

While he is under examination or his case is pend- 
ing, he may be committed to his own home, to his 
school-teacher, to the detention home, to the school- 
nurse or even to the playground. 

Supposing that the child is discovered to be physi- 
cally and morally normal or nearly so, those who are 
in charge of his reformation come to the most delicate 
point in their procedure. There has been until re- 
cently a wide divergence of opinions between those 
who believe that the placing-out of children in foster 
homes, who cannot for various reasons rightly be re- 
turned to their own, is the only course to pursue, 
and those who are strongly committed to the belief 
in reformatories. The most radical exponents of the 
placing-out system acknowledge that there are difficult 
children, for whom no homes can be found. On 
the other hand the advocate of the reformatory cheer- 
fully grants that the cottage system, with its imitation 
of home life, ought everywhere to take the place 
of the barracks. The advocate of the placing-out sys- 
tem calls attention to the fact that the percentage of 
redemptions of child offenders in institutions is dis- 
couragingly small. Travis states that the results at 
Rah way are 77 per cent., at the New York Juvenile 
Asylum, now conducted on the cottage system, 80 per 
cent., at Elmira, among first felons of sixteen to thirty 
years of age, 70 to 80 per cent., and at the George 
Junior Republic, where offenders with no deep crimi- 
nal record or taint are accepted, only 60 per cent., 
while Judge Lindsey, by his personal methods, re- 
deems 96 per cent. These are the advantages which 

310 



Reformatory Methods 



Travis claims for the placing-out system: "It costs 
about half as much as the institution plan, and gives 
better results. Overcrowding is avoided. Those 
peculiar phenomena of institutions, known as im- 
moral explosions, are prevented. Immoral infections 
are avoided. The children cannot be institutionalized. 
The ways of common living are taught. The stigma 
of reformative institutions on children is obviated. 
The nearest approximation to a real home is given the 
child.' ' 

On the other hand, the advocate of the cottage 
reformatory method calls attention to the fact that 
there are possible abuses of children in the isolated 
households to which they may be sent. Your city 
children put in lonely places are unhappy and are 
unlikely to find good schooling; the difficulty of 
placing and replacing incorrigible children until they 
finally find acceptable homes is sometimes even in- 
superable, and the system of examining such homes 
and following up the children is so elaborate that 
the plan is likely to break down at its most essen- 
tial point. All these objections to the placing-out 
system being granted, it still seems to be acknowledged 
that the plan, even in its most extensive elaboration, 
is less expensive than the cottage reformatory, and 
that its results, although careful statistics are not yet 
available, are probably not only more satisfactory in 
percentages of reclamations but also in the quality of 
character produced. This last statement has probably 
turned the tide in favor of the placing-out system, be- 
cause the real test of probation and methods of reforma- 

311 



Betterment through Prevention 

tion is not the number of young persons kept out 
of jail or a criminal career, but the general quality of 
positive character which their treatment helps to 
develop. 

The two apparently divergent views of the treat- 
ment of delinquents seem now to have come into quite 
complete harmony. It is granted that placing-out 
should be tried in every possible case where the 
child's own home is impossible until it has patently 
failed, and that the institution has a place for only 
three classes of offenders — first, the physically abnor- 
mal and mentally deficient; second, the confirmed or 
abnormal offenders; and third, and — this as a tem- 
porary means — for the sobering up of first offenders 
before they are distributed among homes. 

We still find the need for four classes of institu- 
tions — first, the detention home, described in the 
chapter upon the Juvenile Court, as the temporary 
place of refuge and observation of children awaiting 
appearance before the court. Second, the parental tru- 
ant school. This is an institution which should be 
closely connected with the public-school system. 
Parents who have contributed toward the child's de- 
linquency should help pay for his maintenance while 
retained there. It is simply a shelter where the child 
escapes for a time the contaminating influences of the 
evil home or bad associates, and attends the public 
school or a special school connected with the institu- 
tion. As the purpose of the parental school is to 
enable the child to get away from his old environment, 
receive special attention and study, and have an op- 

312 



Reformatory Methods 



portunity to regain his poise and bring forth his own 
moral resources, such a school does not need cottages, 
and buildings of the old-fashioned reformatory char- 
acter will do very well for such a temporary purpose. 
Third, comes the placing-out system. This may be 
either a children's aid society, privately administered 
and endowed, or an adjunct to the juvenile court. It 
involves the careful examination of homes in which 
children are to be boarded, indentured or adopted, 
the safe conduct of the children to these homes, fre- 
quent information, by unexpected visits, of the treat- 
ment and progress of the child, repeated transfer of the 
child, if necessary, until he is well placed, and a sys- 
tem of parole and report after the special period of the 
care of the court or the aid society has been completed. 
Fourth, we have the training-school, house of refuge 
or juvenile republic for children who cannot be satis- 
factorily placed in homes, who are under sixteen years 
of age. The principles to be applied in the conduct 
of such institutions are enumerated by Mangold as 
follows: 

1. The adoption of the cottage system and the abolition of 

the old congregate plan. 

2. The location of the plant in some rural district. 

3. The complete separation of delinquent children from 

other institutional children. 

4. Separation of the sexes. 

5. Emphasis upon training for self-maintenance. 

6. Conditional release whenever the progress of the delin- 

quent justifies such action. 

7. A policy of upbuilding character, 

313 



Betterment through Prevention 

The most picturesque and instructive development 
of the reformatory system has been the Junior Repub- 
lic, especially that established by Mr. W. R. George at 
Freeville, N. Y. That institution has been long 
enough in being to have outgrown its early defects and 
to have manifested its real advantages. Probably the 
picturesque part of it is not the most significant. The 
imitation of adult government by these boys and girls 
has not been the contribution to the science of adult 
government which some of its enthusiastic advocates 
prophesied. The value of the plan is not so much in 
the fact that these young people make laws for them- 
selves and each other, as that their self-initiative, the 
most precious thing which can be developed by any 
form of training, is brought forth by this play system 
of government. There is, no doubt, some advantage 
in the becoming acquainted with values through the 
currency and exchange system of the republic, but as 
the financial amounts involved are an exaggeration of 
those in real life, the approach of the child to real 
financial conditions is only approximate. The em- 
phasis of the court and criminal side of the republic is 
believed by the managers of other kinds of farm 
schools to be disproportionate and unnecessary. The 
punishments are too numerous and rigorous. The 
greatest asset to the George Junior Republic is, no 
doubt, the character and influence of Mr. George 
himself. This is scarcely emphasized at all in his 
own description of his work or in any reports which 
come from the institution. It seems fair to say, how- 
ever, that the strongest moral force of the George 

314 



Reformatory Methods 



Junior Republic is parental rather than governmental. 
A living incarnation of active moral virtues and the 
counselor of all the activities of the school is obtain- 
ing results which he could obtain under some other 
system, and it can be obtained under other parental 
systems where such sturdy and sterling characters as 
his are at the head. 

The Boston Farm School on Thompson's Island is 
the oldest farm school in America. It is not especially 
for delinquents. It has its own system of government, 
housed in a miniature city hall and cottages, which 
governs the activities of the playground. The indi- 
viduality of the boys is called forth by their obliga- 
tions to places of responsibility in the buildings and 
on the grounds, by fostering their love for pets and 
hobbies, and by various intellectual and social and 
musical exercises, which bring out their talents. Here 
too stands at the head a splendid individual, Mr. 
Charles H. Bradley, who lives very close to the boys, 
keeps his hand and his eye upon each one, and in his 
"consulting-rooms," where he works out the camera 
hobby, wood-working and scientific experiments with 
boys who especially need his intimacy and friendship, 
is illustrating the fact that the essential thing in farm 
school life is not an ingenious method, but is the 
application of strong, wise and good personalities to 
boys who live as nearly as possible in home conditions 
and have their own individuality and balance devel- 
oped in every possible way. 

The most serious failure in our present method of 
handling delinquents is with boys who are over six- 

315 



Betterment through Prevention 

teen years of age. Of these the juvenile court law has 
no cognizance, and they are treated by the state as 
adults. It is during the years between sixteen and 
eighteen that a natural semi-criminal or semi-crazy 
period is apt to develop in boys brought up in even 
the best homes. During those years the "wander- 
lust" manifests itself, and thousands of boys depart 
from home, either to join hoboes or to run away to sea, 
or to engage in more or less vagrant occupations. 
The parent who is well supplied with money and wis- 
dom can usually reclaim such a boy, who is simply 
feeling the exuberance of life and the primeval in- 
stincts of his early forefathers. The working-man's 
son is often saved by being put resolutely to work by 
his stern father, and loses some of his nonsense by 
coming up against the real conditions of life. There 
still remain, however, thousands of boys who are 
orphans or half-orphans, or who are neglected by their 
parents, who have lost interest in school, fallen a prey 
to evil associates, accepted the modern pleasure spirit 
without having earned the means to satisfy it, who are 
now not only in the period of greatest moral peril, but 
who are capable of being a menace to the peace and 
safety of society. For such boys only two wise public 
courses seem to be feasible. One would be the devel- 
opment of organizations which should meet this wan- 
der-spirit, by assisting boys to go out into the world in 
paths which lead to training, industry and efficiency. 
There are such colonization societies in England. 
Much of this work is done by the Salvation Army, and 
the recruiting stations of our own army and navy 

316 



Reformatory Methods 



receive thousands of such boys and give them not 
only the military drill but also the school facilities of 
the training ship and military school. The other 
recourse, and the only other one available for boys 
who are too old to be placed out, is that of the 
reformatory institutions midway between the training 
school and the jail. These are already appearing as 
state institutions. Here the difficulties are the survival 
of the barrack system and the jail atmosphere, the 
enormous expense involved in transferring to the 
cottage method and developing the school rather than 
the prison idea, and the complexities that come from 
the fact that those who are sent to such intermedi- 
ate institutions are measured by physical rather than 
psychological or moral age. Even here there are 
scores of hardened young offenders and the percentage 
of reclamations from the state reformatories is dis- 
couragingly small. All that enlightened penology can 
advise is that such institutions be even more carefully 
graded, that their methods be educational and inspir- 
ing and corrective rather than punitive, and that the 
boys who are sent forth from them at the end of the 
indeterminate sentence be given a more varied oppor- 
tunity to go out into the world, to occupations that are 
really serviceable to themselves and others, and be 
supervised for as long a time as possible after their 
departure. 

The central word in reformation is Personality, and 
not Institutionality. 



317 



Betterment through Prevention 



REFERENCES 

"Administration and Educational Work of American 
Juvenile Reform Schools, " by David S. Snedden. New 
York: Columbia University, 1907. 

"The Young Malefactor," by Thomas Travis. New 
York: T. Y, Crowell and Co., 1908. A study of the 
causes of juvenile delinquency and of what is to be done. 

"How Two Hundred Children Live and Learn, " by 
R. R. Reeder. New York: The Charities Publication 
Committee, 1909. 

"The Junior Republic, " by William R, George. New 
York: D. Appleton and Co., 1910. 

"The Story of Good Will Farm," by George W. 
Hinckley. Maine: Good Will Farm, 1905, 

Valuable upon the whole range of public philanthropies 
for children, perhaps "Child Problems, " by George B. 
Mangold, New York, The Macmillan Co., 1911, is most 
helpful upon the topics of this chapter and that which fol- 
lows 






XXVIII 

DEPENDENT AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN 

THE border line between delinquent and depend- 
ent children is an imaginary one. A child who 
is dependent upon charity or other precarious 
ways of making a living or who is neglected is almost 
certain to become delinquent, and delinquent children 
usually come from the class that is financially de- 
pendent and that neglects its offspring. Often the 
children's judge sets apart separate days for the exami- 
nation of cases of truants and of those in whom de- 
linquency and in whom dependency is the principal 
fact, but in practise he finds that he must consider 
both facts together. Dependence is a serious condi- 
tion and its treatment is a matter of the greatest im- 
portance for, as Hart says, "The court's control of the 
delinquent children is usually temporary, while action 
for the dependent children is calculated to determine 
their entire future." 

The care and disposal of children who are depend- 
ent or neglected rather than already delinquent follow 
a similar course to that taken with delinquents. The 
first endeavor is to reinforce and restore to its function 
the child's home, if he has any. The next effort is to 
find a foster home by the placing-out system described 
in the last chapter. The last — and this is only ac- 
cepted when it is inevitable — is the "institution/ 5 

319 



Betterment through Prevention 

Not always dependent but usually neglected are 
the "incorrigibles. " An incorrigible child, under 
the laws of most states, is one who is beyond the con- 
trol of his parents, and the proceedings for his dis- 
posal may be started by his parents or his guardian. 
He may not be a delinquent, but he is almost certain 
to become one. Frequently the chief trouble is that 
he has an incorrigible parent, who needs the court dis- 
cipline more than his child does. 

A few special statements need to be made, in dis- 
tinguishing the care of dependents from that of delin- 
quents. 

First as to the care of dependent infants. "It is 
not possible," said Dr. Amos G. Warner, "to raise 
babies by wholesale. It can matter but little to the 
individual infant whether it is murdered outright or 
is placed in a foundling hospital." A mortality of 97 
per cent, a year for children under three years of age 
in such asylums is not uncommon. The institution 
baby lacks not only the affection and individual watch- 
ing and care given by a mother, but it is deprived of 
that loving handling which exercises its muscles and 
gives zest to its little life. The provision of artificial 
foods is seldom successful. Where wet-nurses can be 
provided, conditions are somewhat better, and a very 
careful boarding out of babies in country villages, even 
with artificial feeding, has reduced the mortality to 
twelve and a half per cent. 

The best results that have come in the care of 
dependent children not orphans have been reached 
by strengthening the sense of parental responsibility. 

320 



Dependent and Neglected Children 

Child-caring agencies are now declining to take de- 
pendent children, unless the parents give up all title to 
them. This prevents any tendency to claim the child 
after it is old enough to contribute to the family sup- 
port, and appeals to any maternal instinct that may 
remain to make the best possible effort to keep the 
child. In foundling asylums mothers are encouraged 
to remain with their infants and are asked to nurse 
another child with their own. The Social Service De- 
partment of the Massachusetts General Hospital, has 
been doing a beautiful work, through Mrs. Jessie D. 
Hodder, in encouraging unmarried mothers to make 
sacrifices to retain and nurture their children and in 
endeavoring to bring to flame the manhood of the 
fathers of such children to recognize their parental 
responsibilities. In general, child-caring agencies 
believe it is better to make it difficult for parents to 
abandon their children and thus discourage illegiti- 
macy and the break-up of homes, while at the same 
time they believe that mere motherhood is not all, 
and that a bad mother is the worst thing alive and 
that the state as overparent must sometimes definitely 
and finally remove unprotected infants from such 
mothers and give them some chance in the world. 
This overparenthood of the state is recognized in 
some states by the creation of a board of children's 
guardians, in whose care is vested the guardianship of 
all children for whose support public money is given. 
Responsibility is a word which applies to public 
as well as parental care. In a chapter in Dr. Hasting 
H. Hart's "Preventive Treatment of Neglected Chil- 

321 



Betterment through Prevention 

dren" Mr. William H. Pear makes the obvious but 
important remark that "If you take a child in an 
emergency, it is your duty to see him through that 
emergency." This means that a mere temporary dole 
of charity or attention is not enough to meet the life 
problem of a neglected child, whose neglect may have 
roots that reach far down, whose immediate and perma- 
nent needs are various and whose real help may require 
a score of instrumentalities and a program that will 
take years to work out. He accordingly states eight 
principles or practices which must be applied when- 
ever a neglected or dependent child is taken hold of. 
These are: Co-operation of agencies; Diagnosis of the 
need; Decision as to the remedy; Application of the 
remedy; Responsibility for proper care, observation 
and, if need be, for definite action, to enforce or assist 
in carrying out the conditions prescribed; Investiga- 
tion before discharge; Subsequent inquiry to learn 
results, and Tabulation of results. 

Behind the individual child-helping agency stands 
the entire force of helpful institutions, conference with 
which in a given instance may prevent overlapping 
and duplication and may make for complete efficiency. 
In Detroit these are all co-ordinated in the Detroit 
Children's Bureau. In Maine there is the Maine 
Children's Commission. In New York City there is 
fhe Catholic Children's Aid Association, which cor- 
relates the work of nine Catholic institutions. 

Only the societies for the prevention of cruelty to 
children, under the lead of the New York Society, 
have shown any tendency to refuse to recognize the 

322 



Dependent and Neglected Children 

interrelations of child-saving or to share in them. 
That society takes the ground that neglect is to be 
sharply distinguished from destitution and it acts ac- 
cordingly, but the Massachusetts Society seems to be 
more in the line of modern views when it states that 
while children still need to be protected from brutal- 
ity and rescued from degrading surroundings, "the 
society recognizes more definitely that it is a prevent- 
ive agency. It believes that it has a duty toward the 
children whose circumstances are, each week that the 
family is left to itself, becoming worse, but which are 
not so bad that court action is advisable or possible. 
It must rescue . . . but it must try to seek out the 
causes which bring about these bad conditions, so that 
it may do its part to prevent them." The Pennsyl- 
vania Society, which shares this view, numbers every 
year hundreds of cases which it classes under the term 
"supervision" but which do not involve the breaking 
up of families. All the stronger societies, whatever 
their view, maintain temporary shelters for abused and 
neglected children, from which children may go to 
appear in court and from which they are removed by 
placing-out or by return to their own homes when this 
is desirable. 

Placing-out of neglected children eventuates more 
often, in the West, in adoption in the families where 
they are received; in the older and more thickly set- 
tled East it is becoming necessary to resort to some sys- 
tem of boarding. The choice of such homes and the 
continued supervision of children placed in them have 
now become a science, in whose art the larger institu- 

323 



Betterment through Prevention 

tions, with their greater resources, are more successful. 
The smaller societies are finding co-operation wise 
in order that they may thoroughly control the after 
care of their children. 

There is still a place for the institutional care of 
orphan and half orphans, though it is a decreasing 
one. There are a few children who do not seem to fit 
anywhere when they are placed out. There are 
parents, husbands or wives widowed, who can con- 
tribute part of the maintenance of their children. 
Two fascinating books, Reeder's "How Two Hun- 
dred Children Live and Learn" and Hinckley's "The 
Story of Good Will Farm,'' almost persuade one that 
institutionalism may be conquered in an institution. 
As some one has brightly remarked, All that is needed 
is "more money and more Reeders." In Dr. Reed- 
er's "Children's Village" the boys and girls live in 
cottages, set among flower beds, chicken coops and 
pets. Eighty-seven per cent, of them, Travis tells us, 
never had a childhood. The education of the children 
consists of their farming, their gardening, their build- 
ing, their domestic work, their play, and their environ- 
ment of every sort. They are allowed to meet real 
problems, to make some mistakes, to suffer some pun- 
ishments. There is always and everywhere the per- 
sonal touch. Already the influence of such work is 
being felt upon all the children's homes and orphan 
asylums in this country. 

The needs of boys and girls are somewhat differ- 
ent. Girls want a quiet, well regulated life. Boys 
demand more of adventure and variety. The world 

324 



Dependent and Neglected Children 

being as it is, it costs three times as much to bring up 
a neglected girl in an institution, to provide her indus- 
trially and morally for life and to protect her in her 
first experiences in the outerworld than it does a boy. 
Aside from the obvious danger of the "lockstep" 
in the institution, there are others equally serious. 
One of these is the fact that the children are discharged 
usually at about fourteen, just at the time of strongest 
self-will, of least self-control and easiest subjection to 
seduction, untrained in the economic hardships of life 
and forced for the first time to take any real charge of 
their own careers. Another danger — and this is one 
which the "placed-out" child faces, too — is that which 
comes to any girl who at sixteen or eighteen turns out 
to be attractive, that she makes an easy acquaintance, 
perhaps with the butcher's boy or a neighboring farm- 
boy, to whom she seems legitimate game and before 
whose enticements, she, with her unstable character 
and suffering from an impure heritage, readily suc- 
cumbs. These dangers give urgency to every endeavor 
that would make the social order a help and not a 
peril and often a doom to the coming race. 

REFERENCES 

"Preventive Treatment of Neglected Children, " by 
Hastings H. Hart and others. New York: The Charities 
Publication Committee, 1911. 

"Preventive Agencies and Methods/' by Charles R. 
Henderson. New York: The Charities Publication Com- 
mittee, 1911. These two monumental studies summarize 
the whole subject and give copious references for further 
study. 

325 



BOOK FIVE 

BETTERMENT THROUGH RELIGIOUS AND 
SOCIAL NURTURE AND SERVICE 

XXIX 

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

WHAT is the Sunday school? At first thought 
the question seems an easy one to answer. It 
is a school connected with a church, which 
meets on Sundays, where for half an hour a week 
young people of different ages are taught the Bible by 
volunteer teachers. This definition would have seemed 
adequate twenty-five years ago, but now such an an- 
swer not only is inaccurate in many of its details, but 
it is absolutely ineffective in defining the purpose and 
rationale of the Sunday school. In our modern reali- 
zation that the child is everywhere undergoing the 
processes of education, and that school is not merely a 
preparation for life but is actual living, we begin to 
see that we do not describe the Sunday school when 
we point out the places and times where it meets and 
its definite subjects of instruction. It is the same 
child who comes to Sunday school that goes to public 
school and to play. There are no methods of train- 
ing possible to secular teaching which may not be used 

326 



The Sunday School 



in religious teaching, and conversely religious teach- 
ing can introduce no teaching methods which are not 
available elsewhere. What we are ultimately teaching 
is not any book, even so sacred a one as the Bible, but 
is the child himself, and just as the child retains very 
little which he is taught in the public school that he 
does not apply to life, so Sunday school is quite 
ineffective except as its lessons are practiced in daily 
living. While the Sunday school makes certain em- 
phases and encourages special feelings and definite 
acts, still the Sunday-school teacher is to think of him- 
self as only one of many forces which touch the child's 
nature, and is to think of his hour in the Sunday 
school as only a part of his privilege and duty in the 
nurture of the child. 

What is the Sunday school for? If all school is 
both preparation for life and actual living, then so is 
the Sunday school. The Sunday school, however, is 
differentiated from all other schools in the fact that it 
is established with a more definite purpose, which is 
the preparing for and living life in its spiritual aspects. 
It is evident that this is something which cannot be 
taught. The deposit of a certain number of scripture 
quotations and accounts of Bible heroes and the incul- 
cation of theological truths in the child's mind is not 
a guarantee that that child is becoming or near to be- 
come a good man. Mr. Ray Stannard Baker has said 
that "The one essential purpose of [education is to set 
an individual to going from within; to start his ma- 
chinery so that he will run himself." This admirable 
definition of education in general has a special applica- 

327 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

tion to the Sunday school. What we are trying to do 
in the Sunday school is not to fasten down certain 
moral ideas in a child's memory, but to help that 
child to desire and to continue to be a good and serv- 
iceable man. You remember that Emerson said, "It 
is a low benefit to give me something; it is a high 
benefit to enable me to be something of myself." 
And again, "Truly speaking, it is not instruction but 
provocation that I can receive from another soul." 
And another has put it in this fashion, "The important 
thing is not so much to do the right thing as to like 
doing the right thing." Of course, a young person 
cannot do right unless he knows what is right. 

The double function of the Sunday school then, in 
developing a self-propelling goodness, is to instruct 
and to inspire. The appeal of the school is to the 
intelligence and the memory, to the feelings and the 
soul. All this may seem very vague, and we must 
evidently come to something more definite before we 
get through, but this much needs to be said at the out- 
set, if for no other reason than to mark the progress 
from the time when to give sermonettes upon the same 
passage of scripture to everybody in the Sunday school, 
from the infants to the grandparents, was regarded as 
good Sunday-school work, to our own time when, 
amid multiform progress, much turmoil and some 
confusion, we are trying to make the school, at the 
cost of no matter what radical changes, a more effective 
instrument for righteousness. These three generaliza- 
tions, if firmly held and constantly remembered, would 
redeem any Sunday-school teacher from mediocrity: 

328 



The Sunday School 



The realization that Sunday-school teaching is part of 
the education of life; the realization that the purpose 
of all education is self-propelling character; and the 
realization that this result is to be obtained partly by 
instruction and partly through inspiration and practice. 
The modern Sunday school in reaching toward 
these ideals has found that there are certain essentials. 
The first and greatest of these is the teacher. "The 
educational problem," says Dr. C. J. Little, "is to 
find the schoolmaster, not to found the school." This 
being "the sort of person to be with children," is not 
such an easy matter, and some Sunday schools, in the 
search for this rare kind of person, have found it neces- 
sary to call upon trained public-school teachers, and 
sometimes to pay some gratuities to persons of charac- 
ter and training. In the younger grades it has been 
found practicable to use wise women of mature years, 
as superintendents of rather large groups of children, 
making them the guides of young women who are their 
assistants. The general exercises of worship are con- 
ducted by these older teachers with the entire group, 
while the work of individual drill and memorizing is 
conducted by their helpers, the whole group being 
summoned together again for review or concert recita- 
tion of that which has just been learned. As boys and 
girls enter adolescence it seems desirable that they 
should be taught by persons of their own sex, the boys 
being given, wherever possible, leaders who have 
athletic, business and moral excellence, while the girls 
approaching womanhood are inspired either by ma- 
trons or by young women of education and character. 

329 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

The appeal of the new Sunday school to the best 
kind of people is increasingly attractive. If the school 
is lifted above the realm of mere Scripture memorizing 
to that of an institution for the making of character, it 
is not hard, especially during these critical years of 
youth, to secure the strongest and most noble men and 
women of the church as teachers. In the earlier years, 
when personality is less effective, the frequent change 
of teachers is not a serious loss, and there is some ad- 
vantage in giving to children of the less advanced 
grades teachers who have become specialists in prepar- 
ing the material for special ages, but upon entering 
the adolescent years it is most important that the 
teaching force should become permanent, and that 
those who give themselves to these critical years should 
distinctly anticipate a connection long enough to be 
lastingly effective. 

Next to the necessity of teachers comes the need 
of training. The difficulty of giving any kind of 
adequate guidance to untrained Sunday-school teachers 
is enormous. The standard books on teacher training 
are scrappy and indefinite, and it is a question whether 
the most alert teacher will ever make any connection 
between such books and the real problems of his 
weekly work. The pedagogical problems of the 
different grades are so different that a teachers' meet- 
ing of the leaders of all the grades is only confusing. 
The strongest recourse which we have at present is 
the calling together as frequently as possible of teach- 
ers who have similar problems for the discussion of 
the actual difficulties which confront them, and the 

330 



The Sunday School 



placing in the hands of the teachers of every grade of 
books which cover adequately the principles and 
methods of religious teaching. The thing which 
seems to be ultimately desirable is that there should be 
in preparation a group of prospective teachers for each 
main division of the school, being thoroughly trained 
by one of the better text-books, by observation of 
classes and by meeting regularly with the present 
teachers, to correct the indefiniteness of the text-book 
by contact with the actual problems. 

Having secured the teacher, the next question is — 
"What shall we teach?" Once we should have an- 
swered "The Bible," and most of us would have said 
"All the Bible." While the Bible is still and will 
probably always remain the central text-book of relig- 
ious education, we are beginning to realize that prob- 
ably not half of the biblical material is suitable for the 
practical ends of religious education, while there is also 
some extra-biblical material which may be utilized for 
this purpose. This remark may seem somewhat here- 
tical to some conservative readers until they frankly real- 
ize that their own method actually is, when they come 
to a biblical passage which is hard to teach to children, 
to use that simply as a text or starting point, and to do 
their actual teaching by illustrations from contempo- 
rary life and literature. If such material is to be used 
at all, why not collate it and prepare it for teaching 
purposes? 

There are three views of the Bible which may 
govern the selection of biblical material for Sunday- 
school use. One view regards the Bible as homoge- 

331 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

neous, and hence, all of equal value for religious 
uses. Those who hold such a view will hardly see the 
need of grouping the material or selecting from it for 
any definite purpose. The second view regards the 
Bible as a source of ethical material, and taking it 
frankly for Sunday-school use simply as a source-book 
of religious and moral ideas, it will grade its selections 
according to the moral needs of the different grades of 
the school. The third view regards the Bible as litera- 
ture and a progressive revelation, and teaches it as 
such. Our most recent curricula have been based 
upon these two last views, the Bible being used as a 
source-book in all the grades up to the adult years, 
with some recognition in the choice of material of its 
varying ethical and spiritual insight, and reserving the 
distinct following of its progressive power for those 
years in which such a progress may be apprehended 
and appreciated. If we are teaching the Bible for the 
sake of the child, and not for the sake of the Bible, 
the second view of the Scriptures must be dominant. 
For the purpose of religious education the Bible has 
no other place than through its adaptability for instruc- 
tion and inspiration in righteousness, and with a schol- 
arly regard for the periods and circumstances of its pro- 
duction it is to be used as a means and not as an end in. 
the moral training of youth. 

Sunday-school authorities seem to have come to a 
substantial agreement as to the proper materials for 
the different grades. In the primary years they are 
choosing the great stories of the Bible, without very 
much regard to their historical sequence, for the pur- 

332 



The Sunday School 



pose of emphasizing the love and care of the Heav- 
enly Father, inculcating the childlike and home vir- 
tues, and relating the child, through worship and 
praise and sympathy, with the circle of his own life. 
In the junior years the power of memory and habit 
are recognized, and the child is now made a master of 
the chief facts of Bible history and the treasures of 
religious aspiration and ethical truth in graded literary 
and ethical passages of the Bible. In the earliest 
adolescent years the young people are given courses in 
biblical biography, which emphasize the heroic and 
personal side. Especially are they brought face to 
face with the man Christ Jesus, and the emphasis of 
teaching is to converge toward the periods of decision 
and to help the child through the religious crises of 
that period. By the sixteenth year the young people 
are ready to discuss the principles of the Christian life 
and base their conversations upon the Christian ethics, 
especially of the New Testament. The later school 
years are busy with the study of the world-field, the 
question of personal vocation and of world-service, 
with a larger or smaller basis of scripture text as a 
foundation. The college and adult years are devoted 
to optional courses in which the great historical and 
critical problems of the Bible and the devotional and 
theological passages are thoroughly studied. 

It may not be too definite nor inaccurate to say 
that the graded biblical material emphasizes first good 
ideals, next good lives, third good ideas, and finally 
good deeds. The extra-biblical material, as this sum- 
mary indicates, is beginning to appear at the adolescent 
23 333 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

years. Some of our recent courses have the heroes of 
Christian history and modern philanthropy and mis- 
sions, alongside the Bible characters. The problems 
of personal ethics are being faced by a frank discussion 
of the dangers, temptations and opportunities of youth, 
the approach being first topical and then biblical, the 
first question being, "What is the problem?" and the 
second one, "What does the Bible say about it?" The 
adult course swings back again into biblical channels, 
and yet many adult classes in our Sunday schools are 
making excursions into inspiring studies in modern 
philanthropy, social science and missions, alternating 
them often with studies of the Bible. 

The complete gradation of teaching material is 
being accompanied to-day by a gradation and variety 
of method. In the primary-room the methods of 
story-telling, play, physical exercise and song are em- 
ployed in constant variety. Some of these exercises 
continue well on through the junior department, 
while those are the years when rote work and memoriz- 
ing are especially emphasized. Concert work and 
the exercise of the dramatic instinct are possible and 
are popular during the years up to the time when self- 
consciousness develops. Manual work of a varied and 
attractive character is creeping into all of the lower 
grades. It consists of the modeling and making of 
pulp maps, simple work in crayon and water color, the 
shaping of figures by the tearing and cutting of paper, 
more elaborate work with the knife, usually done out- 
side the class-room, and at about the time of the 
eighth grade the approach to biblical geography, scen- 

334 



The Sunday School 



ery and customs by the graphic method of the stereo- 
graph. As exercises in writing occur more frequently 
in the public schools they should be lessened in the 
Sunday school, and while small note-books are useful 
all through the high-school years, the notes made 
should be very informal and brief. The method of 
memorizing gradually leads to that of conversation, 
and since the formal question and answer method is 
indolent and comparatively fruitless, the patient effort 
of the teacher is to get the scholars to express them- 
selves frankly upon subjects of real interest to them- 
selves. Adult classes are often conducted by the lec- 
ture method, and where the lecturer is brilliant and 
capable, such courses are often profitable, but men, 
especially business men, are not good listeners and are 
not in the habit of listening without some opportunity 
for physical exercise and expression. The method of 
the seminar is therefore more scientific and co-opera- 
tive as it is more thorough. 

The principal progress that has been made in Sun- 
day-school work as it affects the pupil is, as the last 
paragraph has shown, in the way of increased oppor- 
tunities for personal expression. Once the Sunday- 
school scholar had no other use for his hands than to 
hold a quarterly, or for his eyes than to read answers 
to questions. To-day the endeavor is to secure the 
active co-operation of the child during every year of 
his Sunday-school life. At the beginning he does this 
through play, motion and song. Later he engages 
in dramatic exercises and in work with his fingers. In 
the main room the scholars gather in a circle, symbolic 

335 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

• 

of fellowship, and become a lyceum or debating class. 
The activity of the school is both individual and so- 
cial. The endeavor is to give each child something 
to do and to educate each child personally. The effort 
also is to develop, especially in the later years, a class 
and school spirit, and to get the young people accus- 
tomed to working together. Remembering the cen- 
tral axiom, "No impression without expression/' the 
ideal of the modern Sunday school is that the child 
shall express himself, not only by joining in school 
exercises and stating his opinions and sharing in dis- 
cussions, but that he shall actually live out the good 
life, which he has been trained and inspired to know 
and love. He must not only talk goodness, but live 
goodness. Our best schools are giving as much atten- 
tion to the matter of expression as of impression. The 
lower grades unite in deeds of kindness. Their co- 
operative gifts to tangible missionary causes and deeds 
are reported in attractive ways back to the school. In 
the main room the classes are organized, and in the 
ideal school there is a social institution week days for 
each class, as well as a teaching institution on Sunday. 
The girls become King's Daughters and Sunshine 
clubs. The boys form Castles of the Knights of King 
Arthur, Patrols of the Boy Scouts, etc. Later they 
come together in the Christian Endeavor Society and 
the choir, and are graduated into the offices and socie- 
ties of the church. 

Special attention is being given to certain crucial 
ages in the life of children. The two points which 
demand especial attention are the years when the boys 

336 



The Sunday School 



and girls intend to leave Sunday school, and the years 
which investigation has shown are especially common 
as those of religious conviction and committal. It is 
a curious fact that the time when a child leaves Sunday 
school is also the age most sensitive to religious con- 
viction. It is the time when he is making all his first 
decisions, and the decision whether to remain in or 
depart from the Sunday school, and whether or not 
to commit himself to the religious life, are apt to come 
very close to each other. The time, however, when 
the child is first impelled to become dissatisfied with 
Sunday school is probably not at sixteen, when he 
actually leaves, but nearer twelve, when he is graduated 
from the interesting life of the junior department into 
the quietness and comparative lack of incident of the 
main room. Just here evidently, in the choice of teach- 
ers and the exaltation of characteristic and interesting 
methods, must the Sunday school do its best work, to 
prevent the constant leakage of adolescent boys and 
girls. The time of religious awakening comes from 
thirteen to eighteen years of age. It seems to come 
on in waves — a wave of feeling at thirteen or fourteen; 
a wave of strong conviction more often leading to 
definite committal at about sixteen; and the reflex time 
of reconstruction and stability at eighteen. The 
schools are beginning to anticipate these periods by 
the choice of courses of study which tend to develop 
the appropriate feelings and the requisite will-power 
to meet these changes nobly, and also encouraging the 
pastors, superintendents and teachers in wise and 
wholesome ways of bringing the young people quietly 

337 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

and in groups out into a conscious Christian life and 
allegiance to the church. Some churches still en- 
deavor to assist these natural evolutions of the spirit 
by revivals; others maintain an annual or occasional 
decision day, in which more quietly and naturally 
they endeavor to register the religious condition of 
their schools. Others make the church the goal, 
and by confirmation classes and using the group 
spirit of the class or the adolescent age secure the 
quiet graduation of the young people into the church 
life. 

Still we have not answered the question, "What is 
the Sunday school for?" The teacher who antici- 
pates the general answer which was given at the begin- 
ning of this chapter may set up for himself a high 
ideal, but he will be likely to make it vague and in- 
definite in the work which he endeavors to do next 
Sunday. Each Sunday-school teacher should put 
down in writing, if necessary, the definite result which 
he is trying to secure this year, remembering that it 
will be a little different result from that for which he 
was trying when his pupils were a year younger. 
More than that, he ought to know what he is trying 
to do this month and this week. While he must 
avoid the danger of making the Sunday-school lesson 
a little sermon and making an appeal for conversion 
or some particular Christian virtue as the climax of 
his weekly appeals, he must know pretty clearly where 
he is going and whither he is trying to lead his class. 
A natural and scholarly course of study will often not 
reach a distinctly apprehended moral issue for several 

338 



The Sunday School 



weeks, but it will never reach any issue at all unless 
the teacher has definitely stated it to himself. 

The teacher must neither minimize nor greatly 
magnify his own importance. He is, as has been 
said, only one part of the educational atmosphere of 
his scholars. While somewhere the influence which 
comes from him may constitute a crisis or be a life- 
long inspiration, he must try to fit himself in with all 
the instrumentalities which are doing his pupils service. 
He must know their homes and co-operate with their 
parents. He must be familiar with their play and 
join in it as far as possible, at least in sympathy, and 
he should keep constant track of their progress in 
school and their approach toward the choice of a voca- 
tion. He must know the perils which surround them, 
and be an active participant in efforts to provide 
wholesome recreations and personal influences as an 
antidote. His best work will often be done in the 
gymnasium or the camp, and his highest privilege 
will be that of personal conversation when, either 
through his own skillful leading or the initiative of the 
pupil, they two talk over together the intimate prob- 
lems of life. 

It is well that the splendid Christian enterprise of 
the present has evolved our excellent graded courses 
of study, and is publishing such adequate books for 
teachers' help, and is giving world-wide inspiration to 
the Sunday-school movement, but from the standpoint 
of the parent and the teacher the best thing about the 
Sunday school is that which has always been the best 
thing in any school, that which one of the minor 

339 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

prophets has magnified, the contact of "him that awak- 
ened!," and "him that answereth. " 

REFERENCES 

' 'The Modern Sunday School in Principle and Prac- 
tice," by Henry F. Cope. New York: Fleming H. Revell 
Co., 1908. 

' ' Handwork in the Sunday School, ' ' by Milton L. Little- 
field. Philadelphia: The Sunday School Times Co., 1908. 

Proceedings of the Religious Education Association, and 
the journal, Religious Education, Chicago, contain the gist of 
recent discussions on Sunday-school curricula and methods. 



XXX 

THE CHURCH LIVING WITH ITS CHILDREN 

PARALLEL with the work of the Sunday schools 
of the church there has gradually been growing 
up in our larger churches a chain of social clubs 
and classes which, in the best organized churches, 
constitute a complete Church Institute. There are 
diverse needs which have created this machinery. In 
crowded communities there is the need for wholesome 
physical exercise and free play. In the sparsely set- 
tled regions the children need more sociability and 
fun. In many of the larger towns there are no night 
schools, and the curriculum of the public schools has 
little relation with the future vocations of the pupils. 
In meeting all of these needs the recognition is com- 
ing that one cannot educate a boy or girl religiously 
without educating the whole child, and there is a 
desire on the part of religious educators to reach the 
child upon more than the devotional or passive side of 
his nature. There is also the growing realization that 
"Character is caught, not taught," and that there is 
more religious nurture in a hearty association between 
teachers and scholars in work or play or kind deeds 
than there is in studying the Bible. Most of all, the 
old pedagogical maxim is being remembered, "No 
impression without expression, ' ' and it is felt to be 
actually immoral to teach religion without at the same 

341 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

time undertaking to see that the child practices relig- 
ion. While religion must be practiced by the child 
chiefly in his home and school, he may more distinctly 
undertake even there his religious life, if he is given 
some practice in pleasant co-operation with others. 

The earliest endeavors to meet these needs consist 
often in the Christmas festivities and other parties, 
given to the youngest classes by the Sunday school. 
As everybody knows, a party is a place where chil- 
dren eat ice cream and cake, and usually play some 
games. These simple festivities are often the earliest 
introduction to social life for children and have an im- 
mediate and even permanent moral effect upon attend- 
ance and interest, which is proverbial. These parties 
should always consist of carefully graded groups, where 
big rough boys will not interfere with the pleasure of 
little children. Thus conducted they are as charming 
to their leaders as they are to the children themselves. 
It is extraordinary how fond children are of playing 
the old, old games, and revert to them upon each new 
occasion with ever fresh enthusiasm. 

When a party becomes a continuous institution it 
is often called a "story hour." An hour a week, just 
before dusk or on a hot summer afternoon, given to an 
alternation of lively games and quiet story-telling, 
makes a memorable effect in the child's life, and in 
the city especially relieves the tedium both of the 
child's own monotony and of the weariness of his 
mother. The skilled leader will gradually work out 
a cycle of games, educative to the different senses and 
calling upon the exercise of the simple courtesies and of 

342 



The Church Living with Its Children 

deeds of chivalry, while the story, as we are coming to 
know, is one of the most precious and inspiring meth- 
ods of moral education. There can be no more 
charming sight, while the children are cooling off and 
quieting down after a riotous game, than to see them 
clustered upon the floor about a story-teller who, with 
a magician's power, is holding their rapt attention and 
leaving in their eager minds the deposit of refining 
thoughts and heroic memories. The repetition of 
favorite stories with careful attention to the child's 
curious liturgical desire for the use of exactly the 
same language gives permanence to the impressions 
which were first made. 

The next step in the social organization of children 
is usually what is called "The Junior Society." This 
is a club of boys and girls, generally in the junior 
department of a Sunday school, of ages between nine 
and twelve, which most often meets for an hour on 
Sunday afternoons. When least effective it is a sort 
of second Sunday school, or often worse, a simplified 
church service with a sermonette, but at its best it 
involves ingenious and even dramatic methods of 
teaching the Bible, inspiring instruction in the heroism 
of missions, some simple and wholesome expressions 
of religious desire on the part of the children in the 
way of songs, dialogues, recitals and informal confer- 
ences, and then, best of all, reports of kindnesses actu- 
ally accomplished by the committees and groups of 
children, who had been delegated upon such missions. 
The step is not far from these societies to organiza- 
tions like the Sunshine Society and the King's Daugh- 
s 343 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

ters, usually composed entirely of girls of a little older 
age, and generally meeting some week-day afternoon 
after school. Sometimes groups of boys and girls be- 
tween twelve and fourteen years are organized as old- 
fashioned missionary bands or as intermediate socie- 
ties of Christian Endeavor. The tendency, however, 
during those years when boys are entirely indifferent 
to girls and are so much more noisy and uncontrolla- 
ble is to organize the boys and girls separately. The 
girls become King's Daughters, and for the boys there 
is a variety of church clubs. 

Special organizations for girls in churches have 
existed for a longer time and have been more fully 
developed, than those for boys. 

The typical Mission Band is usually either pre- 
dominantly or entirely a girls' society, and it is gener- 
ally under the auspices of the national denominational 
women's missionary organization, and is almost always 
conducted under the superintendence of, and in imita- 
tion of the women's missionary ^organization of the 
local church. These mission bands have usually about 
the same simple program, which is excellently adapted 
for girls who are in the secondary school period. The 
session, which is generally some afternoon, after school, 
opens with short devotional exercises. There is some 
instruction about missionary work, prepared from one 
of the many excellent hand-books for the purpose, and 
the remainder of the time is spent in sewing. There 
is pleasant social intercourse, sometimes light refresh- 
ments, and the season usually closes with a girls' 
bazaar. 

344 



The Church Living with Its Children 

The King's Daughters does not differ materially 
from the Mission Bands in its actual work. There is, 
of course, the silver cross and the motto "In His 
Name," the interdenominational affiliation, and the 
work is sometimes more distinctly for local philan- 
thropy than for foreign missions. 

Very much the same thing may be said of the Sun- 
shine Society, whose title suggests its purpose — per- 
sonal as well as co-operative deeds of kindness. 

One popular department of the work of these two 
organizations is a Flower Mission to hospitals and the 
"shut-ins." Another is a "Go-cart Club," which 
being interpreted means, a willingness on the part of 
the girls to relieve tired mothers by taking care of 
their babies afternoons. Another expression of kind- 
ness, suitable for older girls, is that of co-operating 
with the Young Women's Christian Association in 
helping entertain working-girls on the day-outings. 

The Queens of Avilion, which originated as a sis- 
ter society to the Knights of King Arthur, has the 
attraction of the elements of mystery and poetry, a 
simple ritual and the charming thought that the girls, 
who are supposed to represent a revival of the queens 
of the Celtic Paradise, endeavor to express in their 
lives that noble conception of womanhood as the healer 
and companion of the bravest and noblest of mankind. 
There is a favorable opportunity in this organization 
for the natural inculcation of ideals of purity and 
womanliness, together with the exercise of the house- 
wifely and artistic virtues which were appropriated by 
the noble ladies of those legendary times. 

345 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

Many churches are finding that girl choirs have a 
refining and helpful influence, as truly as do choirs of 
boys, and recently the opportunity of the camp as an 
occasion of fellowship and thus of preparation for 
united endeavor in the fall and winter is being success- 
fully adopted. 

The response of girls to efforts to bring them 
together socially is less intense than that of boys, and 
the periods of diverse interests are less marked. Girls 
seem to be more inclined to form cliques than do 
boys, and this tendency doubtless must be recognized 
to some extent, yet it is usually found feasible to unite 
two or more cliques in one inclusive organization in 
which all shall co-operate, although there shall be 
several sets of "chums." The service of such femi- 
nine societies, wisely guided in postponing the inter- 
est in boys and in dignifying the tone of properly 
chaperoned parties, is often a most needy and whole- 
some one. Emphasis upon the physical side of life 
through the gymnasium, the choir and the camp is a 
wise way of fending off the "silly age" to as late a 
period as possible. The responsibility of the church 
in guiding and guarding and keeping pure and sweet 
the first friendships of boys and girls can scarcely be 
overestimated. 

No doubt the strongest moral influence in organi- 
zations in the church for either boys or girls is that of 
personal example, and pastors and church leaders can- 
not be too careful nor patient in the search for virile, 
generous-hearted men and sensible matrons, who shall 
appreciate the responsibility and privilege of taking 

346 



The Church Living with Its Children 

charge of the social life of the young people of the 
church. 

One of the most ingenious methods of furnishing 
young boys sociability, manual training and the impulse 
of generosity is seen in the organization called "The 
Captains of Ten/' originated by Miss A. B. Mackin- 
tire, of Cambridge, Mass., and already conducted by 
her for more than twenty years in one church. In 
this club the boys in different grades are given instruc- 
tion during three of the afternoon periods of each 
month in raffia work, cardboard sloyd, whittling, 
carving and cabinet work. Then all this fine exact- 
ness, neatness and honesty, that are taught by the 
education of the hands, are crowned on the fourth 
afternoon of the month by the sympathy and generos- 
ity which come from learning to have an interest in 
others. The work of each year is brought to a climax 
by an entertainment. Then the boys act as hosts 
throughout an evening and realize the privilege of 
entertaining their older friends. 

The entertainments given by "The Captains of 
Ten" have been of a very high character. The dra- 
matic material which they use has been either originated 
or adapted by their leaders. This suggests the remark 
that a much wider and better use might be made of the 
universal but neglected dramatic instinct among boys 
and girls. Instead of vulgar mock trials or the common 
Mrs. Jarley's Wax Works, they might engage in dra- 
matic scripture recitals, in tableaux of fine poems, and 
in the carrying out in a natural way of the juvenile 
parts of simple dramas. The social settlements have 

347 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

blazed the way in showing that often the children in 
the slums are capable of worthy achievement in such 
directions. 

In dividing off the lively boys under fourteen, 
many churches are making use of the popular Boy 
Scouts movement. This is already too familiar to 
need a detailed description, but some of its values may 
here be emphasized. It is a wholesome effort to take 
boys, the majority of whom in America to-day live in 
city conditions and have lost many of their instincts 
for outdoor life, back to the woods and the camp- 
fire, to develop resource in emergencies, to make them 
handy and agile, to give them something better than 
the hysterical watching of athletic sports in which 
other people compete, and to restore to them the 
nobility of individual prowess. It is a method of 
recreation which centers in camp outings and there 
teaches all kinds of woodcraft pursuits. It gives its 
honors by scientific standards, and in its strifes the 
boys contend, not with each other, but with them- 
selves, with their own record, with time and space, 
and with the forces of nature. The general desire of 
boys for glory is satisfied by decorations, which are 
distinctive and speak a language of their own, and 
which no boy can wear without making a record for 
himself. While the original movement was not 
religious, in the sense of being sectarian, yet each 
religious organization can add requirements for the 
coveted decorations, such as Sunday-school and church 
attendance, knowledge of the Sunday-school 'essons 
and acts of helpfulness within the church circle. The 

348 



The Church Living with Its Children 

Boy Scouts organization has been somewhat discredited 
by those who have yielded to the fever to make it 
spectacular and who would bring the boys into unde- 
sirable notoriety, but its return to nature is entirely 
wholesome and needful. 

There is a modification of the scouting idea repre- 
sented in the organization called The Brotherhood of 
David, in which the boys represent the companions 
of David in exile and prepare themselves for kingship 
by the activities which scouting has made familiar. 
This organization is perhaps more adaptable to winter- 
time, because the "cave" where the boys meet may be 
a room in the church, where there is more opportunity 
for dramatic exercise than in the original scouting 
project, and the fraternity element is somewhat empha- 
sized. 

The Boys' Brigade has had a long and useful 
career, although it is not so prominent to-day as 
formerly. Probably it does not include so many edu- 
cative features as the Boy Scouts and some other plans, 
but it does make an immediate appeal to large groups 
of boys; and especially among street boys, who are 
naturally slovenly and do not have a good carriage, it 
produces an instant and rather remarkable effect. As 
a method of dealing with boys in the mass, it is con- 
venient. 

Boy choirs were perhaps originally introduced in 
churches because of the sweetness of their contribution 
to the church music, but it is now seen that they have 
a helpful and refining effect upon the boys themselves. 
Among lads drawn indiscriminately from the street, it 
24 349 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

is estimated that over 75 per cent, are capable of 
"making good" as choir singers, under a careful leader 
at the outset. The choir-master who will begin 
promptly and decisively to start with distinctly boy 
music, nip any fooling in the bud, keep up his enthu- 
siasm and always have a glimpse of something ahead, 
will become a masterful leader of groups up to the 
time when their voices begin to change. Bringing 
twenty boys into the choir loft will also bring twenty 
more boys into the pews. Besides the refining effect 
of a musical training, the drill in reverence in the 
church is of much importance, and the continuance of 
a group of boys in a religious atmosphere is bound to 
produce character. Most churches supplement the 
monotonous drill of choir practice by giving the boys 
outings and socials, and the best leaders give their 
boys a summer week in camp. 

Churches which appreciate the important part 
that a well-trained body has in the nurture of will- 
power and the making of efficiency are trying to plan 
physical opportunities for their boys and girls, both 
for winter and summer. Young people appreciate 
even the most meager kind of a gymnasium, and in 
low and cramped quarters some splendid work is being 
done. The eagerness of our young people for games 
is so great that the leaders of church gymnasiums have 
tended to give most of their attention to play rather 
than what is called "body building," and so extreme 
are we Americans in our devotion to specialized play 
that just now basket-ball seems to have monopolized 
most of our gymnasiums, and too often the creation of 

350 



The Church Living with Its Children 

a "representative team" for the church has taken a 
too disproportionate attention of the leaders and 
robbed the majority of their share of the gymnasium 
privileges. The best trainers insist that each hour of 
games shall be preceded by a short but vigorous period 
of work with wands or bells or poise movements, and 
they are striving to alternate indoor baseball, volley- 
ball, medicine-ball and games which utilize apparatus 
with basket-ball, while they insist that every child who 
desires shall have his due share of time upon the gym- 
nasium floor. 

No less important than the gymnasium is the 
church camp, and now that social workers are realizing 
how inexpensively a good camp can be conducted, 
they are multiplying everywhere. Almost always it is 
possible to secure the free use of a high, wooded piece 
of land near water, the loan of boats and tents, and 
the leadership of intelligent young people who are 
good swimmers, know something about cooking and 
have some sense of discipline. With sensible regula- 
tions regarding the restriction of firearms and the use 
of the boats and the bathing, there is no trouble about 
safety. Boys and girls can generally earn the small 
amount of money which is necessary to give them a 
week of camp life, and they should be given the 
largest share in the cooking and the policing of the 
tents and grounds. Some degree of military disci- 
pline is useful in camp, in securing a real program, the 
division of labor and authority in emergencies. There 
is something about the lure of tent-life and of the 
camp-fire and of the return to the earth, the water and 

351 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

the uninterrupted sky which softens the feelings, 
makes the heart generous and turns the thoughts to 
higher things. The direct religious influence of the 
camp, well conducted and carried on with a sane, 
religious motive, is incalculable. 

For boys between thirteen and sixteen, just leaving 
the grammar school, and during the first two years 
of high school, there is no more popular organization 
than the Knights of King Arthur. Boys of those 
years are said by psychologists to be in the knightly 
period, and it is just then that they respond to the 
ritual, regalia and the glamor of exclusiveness. In 
this organization the boys claim to fulfill the ancient 
prophecy of King Arthur that he would return to earth 
and organize a kingdom of righteousness. The boys 
represent themselves to be knights, take the names of 
ancient and modern heroes, pass through the advanc- 
ing degrees of Page, Esquire and Knight, reserve 
"The Siege Perilous" for their own heroes, and 
engage in "Tournaments," usually athletic, and 
"Quests," which are co-operative deeds of kindness. 
Their leader, of course, is Merlin, Arthur's hoary 
counselor. The organization is not secret, but pri- 
vate from boys not members. It is found almost 
entirely in churches, and is now the largest boys' fra- 
ternity in the world. The chief influence of the order 
is the fact that under the guidance of an adult the 
boys actually live out the knightly life together, and 
their "gang" spirit, instead of tending, as is usual, 
toward the ideals of the noisiest or most dominant 
boy, which are probably lower than the average, are 

352 



The Church Living with Its Children 

lifted toward the ideal of the best manhood. Without 
any preaching the club becomes a group of well-inten- 
tioned fellows doing wholesome things. The plan is 
so elastic that it gives opportunity for physical activi- 
ties, special manual work, parliamentary practice and 
visitations to other castles. It gives us an antidote to 
the high-school fraternity, and postpones the interest 
of the boys in girls, by keeping them apart a little 
longer, while at the same time it exalts the purest 
ideals of womanhood. Some of the initiations are 
humorous, and there is a hearty wholesomeness about 
the whole thing which is refreshing. 

.More and more as night schools develop and pub- 
lic schools broaden, there is less necessity for the con- 
ducting of educational classes in churches, but there 
are still places where church people find it necessary 
to give to the neglected youth of their communities, 
especially the working boys and girls, some opportu- 
nity for evening study. These classes are most likely 
to be groups studying the English language and com- 
position, doing typewriting, millinery, dress-making 
and wood-work, as well as clubs for parliamentary 
and civic practice. They point the way to more 
efficiency in the public schools and generally give place 
to night schools, which their success encourages. 

The latest means of help for young people which 
crowded city conditions are forcing into being is the 
church dormitory for boys or girls lately from the 
country or working for small wages. A few are al- 
ready in existence and more are on the way. They 
assist the transition from rural to city life under safe 

353 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

auspices and enable the young person to become self- 
supporting under good homelike influences. They 
should not be too large or institutional, and should 
retain the atmosphere of a college dormitory. Inci- 
dentally, they guarantee to the church a loyal body of 
young workers and supporters. 

As boys and girls grow older their leaders begin to 
covet to have them enlist in service for others. This 
is brought to pass among the girls through the King's 
Daughters and similar societies, a little later sometimes 
by organizing them into brides' clubs, singing chor- 
uses, sewing circles, and then later by taking them into 
the women's organizations of the church. But.no 
such provision seems to exist for boys. The tendency, 
even of the social work of the church, is to make them 
partakers rather than partners, to make them lean 
rather than to encourage them to lift. Selfishness is 
actually encouraged by much social work. Not only 
is this true, but the church has failed in its social side 
at just the point where the Sunday school has often 
failed, and thus when the boys are leaving Sunday 
school is the time when the church seems to lose the 
power in social directions to interest them. A few 
young men can be utilized as ushers, Sunday-school 
teachers and officers, but much church work is not 
man's size, and the dreariness of the social atmosphere 
of many churches is a sore contrast to the public places 
of amusement and play which beckon to the young 
man on every side. The gymnasium and the camp 
meet the social craving, and the Christian Endeavor 
Society is often able for a time, at least, to hold the 

354 



The Church Living with Its Children 

attention of such boys as are fond of girls, but it does 
not always give them a large opportunity for the exer- 
cise of their manly abilities. One organization which 
is attempting to meet this need in a unique way, is 
the Brotherhood of St. Andrew in the Episcopal 
Church. This organization distinctly appeals to boys 
only upon the highest side of their natures. It be- 
lieves that young men should be used, not amused. 
Its purposes are distinctly two — the living of a life of 
devotion and prayer, and the attempt every week to 
help some other young man toward the church. These 
brotherhoods are naturally not very large, but their 
leaders believe that they are permanent and potent. 
It is a splendid thing to have in any church such a 
group of boys, manly and generous, who are not only 
trying to win others to the church, but who are being 
trained when they become men to live this same gen- 
erous life in the community. 

In the Knights of King Arthur this thought of 
service for others is developed in the Third Degree, 
that of knighthood, and also in the ranks of the " Peer- 
age," in which, after the organization has lived for a 
while and a clan of older and trained boys is evolved, 
it is given special care of the younger ones and of 
deeds of service in connection with the church. 

The Pilgrim Fraternity is a society originated by 
Professor George W. Fiske, now of Oberlin College, 
when he was a pastor, to meet this same need. These 
"Pilgrims" are on the quest of service. The organi- 
zation is secret and is intended not only to counter- 
act the high-school fraternity, but directly to make 

355 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

serviceable men. The Roman Church has its great 
secret guilds and fraternities, and Protestants are likely 
to follow with societies using the knightly glamor. 
Many of the Brotherhoods of men in the churches are 
now welcoming boys as young as eighteen, and are 
enlisting them, alongside their elders, in the various 
activities of these organizations. 

The Christian Endeavor Society was organized, as 
its name implies, with this same end in view. While 
its life has always centered in the devotional meeting 
and emphasis has been made continuously upon a 
pledge, which makes daily Bible reading and prayer and 
the duty of weekly vocal expression of religious ideals 
prominent, yet the livest societies have been those 
which have actually "endeavored." While the value 
of the things done by Christian Endeavor Societies 
has varied in different places, and few of them have 
been strong without the constant supervision of pas- 
tors or other adults, yet the variety and quantity of 
service rendered by such societies has, no doubt, been 
prodigious. Probably the most wholesome way of 
enlisting any organization of any young people in 
work for others is to give them a big task. There is 
perhaps nothing which is more challenging than to 
lay upon their shoulders the concerns of an entire in- 
stitution. Some young people's societies have actually 
conducted branches, chapels, missions, and even social 
settlements, and the effect upon the members who 
have led in such large concerns has been both intel- 
lectually and morally most inspiring. 

Not all churches have developed such an elaborate 
356 



The Church Living with Its Children 

system as has been described in this chapter. Few 
churches have the leaders or the opportunities to do 
such varied tasks. The ideal, however, for every 
Christian church, with due regard to the social and 
religious needs of its young people, seems to be that 
there should be for every grade of instruction in the 
church school parallel formal or informal opportunities 
for social intercourse and for instruction and exercise 
in service. 

REFERENCES 

"Church Work with Boys," by William Byron Forbush. 
Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1910. 

"The Boy and the Church," by Eugene C. Foster. 
Philadelphia: The Sunday School Times Co., 1909. 

"Boy Life and Self Government," by George W. Fiske. 
New York: The Association Press, 1910. 

All three of these books take up broadly the matter of 
religious nurture and show how the church and other relig- 
ious institutions may do the best work. 



XXXI 

THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 

THE Young Men's Christian Associations of this 
country are evidently passing through a rapid 
evolution. This evolution may seem to ob- 
servers to consist chiefly in a building era. The enor- 
mous sums of money which are being raised in our 
cities, large and small, for new Association buildings, 
are adding impressive institutions of betterment to our 
city life. There is also another evolution in the 
interior planning of these men's palaces. Instead of 
having a large auditorium as the central feature, de- 
signed for the holding of Sunday afternoon religious 
meetings, with a large adjoining reading-room, the 
more noticeable features are the immense gymnasium, 
the long series of class-rooms, the social rotunda, and 
— the new feature in Association life — three or four 
stories of dormitories. But the more significant evo- 
lution of Association work is marked by the discovery 
of the constantly diminishing average age of Associa- 
tion members. It has been found that there are actu- 
ally more members in the American Associations under 
twenty-one years of age than over, so that the Young 
Men's Christian Association is already predominantly 
a boys' Association. It is the needs of boys that have 
largely changed the character of the buildings, and it 

358 



The Christian Associations 

is evident that they will make demands which will 
even more rapidly alter the work of the Associations 
in the future. 

The development of boys' work in the Christian 
Association has already made necessary the setting 
apart of special buildings for work among boys who 
are still of secondary school age. Sometimes these 
boys' buildings are the discarded buildings that were 
built for the men, and sometimes they are buildings 
erected especially for the boys' use. It has been found 
feasible to do work for that large section of boys be- 
tween eighteen and twenty-one in the building devoted 
to men's work, and it is also possible to conduct day- 
school classes for even younger boys in the men's 
building. 

In this chapter no effort will be made to differen- 
tiate the work that is done in the two kinds of build- 
ing, but all the work done for males under twenty- 
one will be considered as one work. The natural 
division is not so much that of the purpose of the 
building where the work is done as of the circum- 
stances and needs of the boys who are being helped. 
More and more some of the best work of the Associa- 
tion is being done outside the Association building 
altogether. 

The Association work with boys used to be some- 
what extemporaneous. It consisted so much of the 
imitation of the work done for men as could be accom- 
plished in the spare time of secretaries employed for 
other purposes. There was a Sunday afternoon boys' 
meeting, because there had been a Sunday afternoon 

359 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

men's meeting, and the Bible classes and committee 
work were very much like the similar work which the 
men were doing. Now, however, every Association 
which is really trying to do work with boys sets apart 
one or more secretaries who do nothing else than attack 
the boy problem. Important and worthy though this 
work is, it has not yet been found easy to discover 
men of big enough caliber who would look upon the 
boy secretaryship as a life vocation, in numbers large 
enough to begin to fill the positions that are ready. 
The Association training schools are more likely to 
secure students who will turn out to be good physical 
directors than they are men of great enough knowl- 
edge of boy nature and a wide enough culture to do 
this work. Association work with boys requires such 
breadth of mind and preparation that work among high- 
school boys, for example, needs secretaries who are 
as large men intellectually as high-school teachers, and 
work among employed boys demands leaders who are 
men of affairs as well as good scholars. The best 
means of securing competent men so far has been to 
search the senior classes of our colleges and persuade 
young graduates to take a year of preparation in a 
large boys' Association and such other special training 
as the particular field which they are to enter may 
demand. 

Association work with boys is no longer extempo- 
raneous. Before reorganizing the boys' Association in 
the city of Detroit, a staff of twenty experienced sec- 
retaries was sent to that city for a fortnight, to make a 
detailed survey of the conditions of boy-life and the 

360 






The Christian Associations 

needs for work with boys in that city. When it was 
determined to begin special work with high-school 
boys, the international secretary of preparatory-school 
work spent several months of investigation in the city 
before a program was announced. Such a thoughtful 
approach to the work commands respect and insures 
economy and efficiency of administration. 

The work of the Association for boys divides 
actually, though not formally, into work for rural 
boys, work for street boys, work for foreign and col- 
ored boys, work for employed boys, work through the 
Association schools, work for high-school boys and 
work for preparatory-school boys. There is also the 
work done chiefly in the men's buildings for the boys 
in the transition years between eighteen and twenty- 
one. This may broadly be considered as a continua- 
tion of the boys' work and an introduction to the 
men's work, and will not be especially described in 
this chapter. 

The work for country boys, though fundamental, 
is the most recent undertaken by the Association, and 
hence is only in a tentative state. It is under the 
supervision of the county secretaries, who in turn are 
usually guided by a special state secretary for county 
work. In country high schools where there are fifty 
or more boys, usually a high-school Y. M. C. A. is 
organized. The minimum requirements are that it 
should have a competent faculty adviser, with whom 
the county secretary frequently corresponds, and that 
it should receive visitation from him or the state secre- 
tary at least twice a year. These small Associations 

361 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

usually have Bible study as their chief object, and 
relate themselves in some degree to the athletic activi- 
ties of the school. Sometimes the Association works 
in small towns by organizing or encouraging boys' 
Bible classes in the local churches, and bringing these 
boys together occasionally for a banquet, a conference, 
or for the establishment, when possible, of a village 
game-room or gymnasium. There is usually a county 
conference of these groups, which involves no great 
distance for travel and brings together a thoroughly 
representative number of boys from each village, who 
carry back the enthusiasm of the joint movement to 
the scattered groups. The Association is uniting 
with others in the investigation of rural conditions and 
is finding, as other investigations do, that the social 
salvation of the rural districts is largely in the hands 
of three institutions already established, viz.: the 
church, the public school and the grange. Probably 
the Association will in the future work even more 
directly through these established organizations, utiliz- 
ing their buildings and machinery, to give direction 
and focus to their special endeavors to help boys. 

The Association has not yet entered very distinctly 
into work for boys of the city streets. Historically 
the Association began its work among men of the 
clerical class, and it has necessarily been obliged to 
continue to serve largely those who could pay for its 
privileges. In a few instances, as in the Edwin Ban- 
croft Foote Boys' Club of New Haven, buildings have 
been especially provided for newsboys and the sons of 
working men, where the work is conducted in such a 

362 



The Christian Associations 

broadly unsectarian way that the prejudices of Jews 
and Catholics are not excited. In other cities the 
Associations are reaching hundreds of street boys with- 
out segregating them into a special class or department, 
by offering reduced rates or partial payments for mem- 
bership, so as to make their advantages available. It 
is probably fair to say that the Associations have not 
yet so successfully reached the "scatterbrain" type of 
street boy, especially between ten and fourteen, as 
have the clubs for street boys described in another 
chapter. 

The work of the Association for colored boys 
differs from that for whites in no essential respect, ex- 
cept that in cities where there are a great many Negroes 
it is usually done in the buildings of the colored Asso- 
ciations. 

The work for foreign boys has not yet become 
a distinct department of the Association. It is, of 
course, desirable that foreign boys should be made 
Americans as rapidly as possible, and so emigrant boys 
are received as far as possible in classes with the native 
born. The Association, however, in great industrial 
communities where such boys are arriving in large 
numbers is doing a fruitful service for such boys who 
are working, by opening evening classes for instruction 
in English. Perhaps the most striking and service- 
able work of the Association for the foreigner is that 
of sending young American men to the countries from 
which we receive our emigrants, so that they may 
study the characteristics and social needs of these 
people in their own homes, returning to America to 

363 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

apply this knowledge and sympathy to the Association 
work here. An even more practical service is that 
which has recently been inaugurated, by which the 
Association has its representatives upon all steamers 
arriving at this country, which bring immigrants, who 
learn the destination of each and arrange that he shall 
be met in the city to which he is going by an Associa- 
tion secretary, who shall immediately befriend him and 
help him find his place in our industrial, social and 
moral order. 

The work for employed boys is becoming a very 
large division of the Association program. In every 
large Association special evening hours are set apart 
for night classes and gymnasium classes for boys who 
are employed in the daytime. In some cases special 
efforts are made in behalf of messengers, cash boys 
and newsboys. Low cost meals are provided for those 
who are accessible to the buildings, and sometimes for 
those who must work late at night. The most valu- 
able work which the Associations are doing for em- 
ployed boys is its educational work. Through the 
schools of the Association the boys and young men 
who are in unskilled employments are preparing them- 
selves for higher vocations and to larger, more useful 
ends. One of the most recent and encouraging efforts 
in this direction is that of half-time schools, in which, 
by co-operation with local industries, a pair of boys is 
enabled to secure both a technical education and the 
financial means for self-support during the process. 
Fred works at the Association desk this week, while 
Jim is in the factory, and next week Fred stands at 

364 



The Christian Associations 

Jim's bench in the factory, while Jim occupies Fred's 
desk in the Association. 

This work for employed boys runs into the broader 
work which the Association is doing through its 
schools. Started as night schools, the value of the 
direct and economical educational methods of these 
schools has developed them into a series of preparatory 
schools, many of which now meet in the daytime and 
prepare not only for various technical vocations, but 
even for college. Thus the Association building is 
utilized during the daytime, when it was hitherto 
almost empty, and hundreds of boys who were being 
lost out in the high school because of its too strongly 
classical emphasis or its vagueness, are finding their 
way through the Association. It seems probable that 
the Association schools are going to make definite con- 
tributions to educational science in ways which the 
public schools may learn to imitate. In their atten- 
tion to the individual scholar and his needs, they are 
already doing all that the best private preparatory 
schools accomplish, and are reaching a class of boys 
who cannot afford to go to the academies. So great 
is the demand for education among the masses in 
this country that several Associations already have 
the power to confer degrees, and one of them at least 
has worked out so many departments that there is 
talk of the incorporation of its schools as a univer- 
sity. 

The work for high-school boys has always been 
central in the thought of the Association, because boys 
who can afford to stay in school long enough to reach 
25 365 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

the eighth to the tenth grades can usually afford to 
pay for Association privileges. In the larger cities, 
however, the Associations have not been content to 
build up a clique of well-to-do boys who use the Asso- 
ciation for the advantages for which they can pay, with 
little sense of loyalty and service. The social and 
moral conditions of these immense school aggrega- 
tions, numbering sometimes two thousand boys, gath- 
ered from scattered homes and developing tendencies 
which are hard to control because they are exercised 
outside of school hours, are so serious and complicated 
that they demand careful study and the wisest ap- 
proach. The modern high school, through its classes 
and its many varied social and athletic organizations, 
offers so many attractions that the Association, in its 
building and its athletic, social and educational work, 
appeals to almost none of the leading boys and to but 
very few in the two upper classes. "The only ap- 
proach left into the high-school boy's life," says Mr. 
David R. Porter, "is the attraction of moral and relig- 
ious work. This may seem to some a gloomy out- 
look. As a matter of fact, it is the most happy of all, 
as has been proved in school after school. It is easier 
to gain a sustained interest in religious work than it is 
in athletics, and to satisfy that real, though often un- 
named longing, must be the chief work of the Asso- 
ciation among city high-school boys." With this 
theory as the basis, the Association is now making this 
approach to the high schools. It is no longer seeking 
to make its building the center of high-school interest, 
nor to be careful whether the high-school boys in 

366 



The Christian Associations 

large numbers actually buy membership tickets. The 
endeavor is to find and divide out an inner circle of 
aggressively religious boys, who shall leaven a larger 
circle of well-meaning, but passive associates, who in 
turn shall interpenetrate the athletic and social life of 
the school, counteracting the influence of the few who 
are positively immoral, and uplift the entire school 
spirit. The best way to secure this result seems to be 
to obtain entrance to the school, through an address 
by a representative of the Association, or by a mass 
meeting of high-school boys, and thus having secured 
the attention of the boys, to make a careful choice of 
school leaders who are of actively moral quality, and 
giving them the honor of being representatives of the 
school, call them together for a practical conference 
upon high-school problems. These conferences are 
usually a delightful mixture of athletics, banquet and 
serious discussion. The outcomes are usually two — 
the development of classes for Bible study, either in 
the Association building or in the separate churches 
of the community, and the quiet and manly endeavor 
of this group of leaders, through individuals and 
organizations, to moralize the spirit of the school. 
The Bible classes are emphasized for two reasons: first, 
because they satisfy the real, though unrealized desire 
of boys for the best things, so forming a natural and 
permanent meeting-place for these young religious 
leaders; and also because they strengthen the social 
and religious life of these circles of boys in the natural 
surroundings of their own neighborhoods. Strong 
boys' classes in local churches reach more deeply into 

367 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

boy life than classes drawn out of their neighborhoods 
into the Association building. The Y. M. C. A. 
Press has published a half dozen text-books of Bible 
study, especially intended for high-school boys, which 
are so excellent that they are being used already in 
many Sunday schools. There is also a book by Pro- 
fessor J. W. Jenks of Cornell on "Life Questions of 
High-school Boys," which is an admirable study for 
boys in practical Christian ethics. 

As these classes continue they are led into the 
study of the social and religious needs, not only of 
boys but of the community, and are enlisted as far as 
possible in acts of practical service. Thus the ten- 
dency, either of the inner circle or of the outer circle 
which develops from the inner circle, toward self-com- 
placency and hypocrisy, is counteracted, and the boys 
are given before they leave home for college or busi- 
ness at least a year of experience in doing something 
for "the other fellow." 

One of the most effective ways by which the Asso- 
ciation has succeeded in uplifting the ideals of high- 
school boys is by the organization of Sunday School 
Athletic Leagues. The best of these leagues admit 
boys only of the last two years of high school. They 
encourage the formation of football teams, basket-ball 
nines and track athletic teams in the boys' classes of 
the separate churches, and then arrange for league 
meetings. These leagues tend to redeem the ordinary 
vacant lot from hoodlumism, and have an indirect but 
real influence upon the athletics of the school. It is 
by securing the confidence and friendship of individual 

368 






The Christian Associations 

athletes, rather than by effort with the mass, that an 
impression is made upon the moral ideals of the school 
itself. 

The work in preparatory schools, though among 
the same ages of boys as those in high schools, has 
been found to demand special methods of treatment. 
The whole outlook of the preparatory school-boy is 
toward college, and his special temptations are to ape 
the vices of college students. The work in prepara- 
tory schools, therefore, is strongly imitative of the best 
Association work in the colleges. The emphasis is 
upon the substitution of the best type of manliness 
for that which may be current in the public sentiment 
of the school. Something is done to develop Bible 
study and a sense of obligation to younger brothers 
and a social enthusiasm in the fraternities of the 
school. The Bible study work offered is of a charac- 
ter parallel in work with the other text-books used in 
the school, and it is usually possible to secure the 
hearty co-operation of the school principals and of the 
most popular Christian teachers in the conduct of 
these classes and in their ultimate success. Delega- 
tions are frequently sent out from these academies to 
country schoolhouses, and the boys send representa- 
tives to the State Y. M. C. A. conference of college 
and academic students, thus relating themselves dis- 
tinctly to the Christian element in the colleges. The 
colleges, in turn, often send Association representa- 
tives to the preparatory schools, which are their feed- 
ers, and a strong effort is made when interscholastic 
athletic meetings are held at the colleges, to make the 

369 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

work of the college Association known to the academic 
students who attend these meetings. 

The work of the Association is even broader than 
all of these departments of effort which have been 
mentioned. It was the Association, for example, 
which had the foresight to realize the tremendous and 
sudden popularity of the Boy Scouts movement, and 
which has informally kept its hand upon this move- 
ment from the start. In some cities the Patrol leaders 
are trained in the Association building, and so a move- 
ment which might degenerate to mere vagabondage is 
made of educational and social worth. The Associa- 
tion secretaries have often been the instigators of play- 
ground movements. They usually keep in close 
contact with the juvenile court, and even furnish vol- 
unteer probation officers, either for that court or the 
reformatories of the city, county or state. The Asso- 
ciation has always stood strongly for instruction in the 
hygiene of sex. It has sometimes furnished lectures 
to boys upon this subject, or it has co-operated by 
formation of societies for the purpose of promulgating 
these things in proper ways. The Association is the 
natural center for the training of Sunday-school teach- 
ers, and while it is hard to overcome the inertia 
of teachers against leaving their own homes and 
neighborhoods for such periodic training, the work 
wherever it has been successful has done much to lift 
the grade of Sunday-school instruction. The Asso- 
ciation has stood strongly for the utilization of older 
boys as teachers for younger ones, and it is usually 
able to gather boys of the older high-school years in 

370 






The Christian Associations 

training classes when it cannot secure the presence of 
adults. 

The Associations are beginning to open dormi- 
tories for working boys, as well as for men. It is not 
being found wise to build enormous boys' hotels, but 
if such refuges are to be of real use to the boys who 
most need them, they must be scattered in the differ- 
ent parts of the city, and the present tendency of 
endeavor is to hire or buy inexpensive properties and 
make cottage dormitories of them. Such dormitories 
are useful, not only for the boys whom they entertain, 
but also help to raise the quality of all the lodging 
houses in the immediate vicinity. 

The next step in Association work is evidently 
going to be more and more away from the central 
building, into branch work covering all the sections 
of the city. Boys have a much smaller radius of travel 
than men, as they are not so freely supplied with car 
fare. A work which shall really reach a community 
of boys must touch all its friends, its neighbors and 
its " gangs." The Associations are now sending 
squad leaders to church gymnasiums and social settle- 
ments, are developing work for boys in the railroad 
branches, and are endeavoring to co-operate with 
neighborhood groups of churches in solving the spe- 
cial boy problem of their own districts. 

The work of the Association is rapidly spreading 
through the summer time. A special chapter has been 
given to the consideration of camps, in which the 
Associations have been pioneers and exemplars. Their 
summer and winter conferences are equally significant. 

371 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

These meeting-places, not of workers with boys so 
much as of boy leaders, are expressions of their con- 
fidence that the best method is not that of work for 
boys but of work with boys and work by boys. These 
manly, unaffected groups of leaders, conferring to- 
gether regarding the needs of their comrades, are an 
inspiring sight to any adult who may have the priv- 
ilege of dropping in upon them. They are illustra- 
tions of the fundamental method which now underlies 
all the Association's work with boys, an ideal which 
was copied from the Master — the inner circle trained 
to leaven the outer circles, clear to the circumference 
of boy humanity. 

The Associations of late have come to feel their 
opportunity as centers and forces for larger social serv- 
ice in the community. They have organized a Society 
for the Promotion of Social Service in the Young 
Men's Christian Associations, which is trying to study 
these opportunities and make a new ideal for masculine 
membership, that some men at least shall pay for 
membership not to get something but for the privilege 
of doing something. Secretaries have already shown a 
willingness to lead in such activities. The late Glen K. 
Shurtleff deserves the credit of having been the father of 
the juvenile court and probation system of Cleveland. 
The Troy, N. Y., secretary helped organize the vacant 
lot garden scheme for boys and girls of that city. In 
Keokuk the secretary set his Bible study committee to 
work investigating the condition of the colored popu- 
lation, the practical result of which was a club for col- 
ored boys. The West Side Branch, New York City, 

372 



The Christian Associations 

teaches English to the boys of a notorious street gang 
of Italians. The Association men set us all a good 
example in their way of utilizing volunteer service. 
They pick key-men, they give them definite tasks, 
they assign them to short terms of service. They 
believe that "standing committees stand still," and so 
when a man's part of a job is finished they thank him, 
discharge him and give him another job. 

Much that has been said about the work of the 
Young Men's Christian Association applies to that of 
the Young Women's Christian Association, although 
that work is more recent and less fully developed. 
The women's Associations too are feeling the need of 
special buildings and facilities for girls, although from 
the beginning their work has been distinctly a work 
with girls. A modern Association building reminds 
one, in its refinement, its sociability and its varied 
attractions, of the best college sororities, with a strong 
religious emphasis behind all. One of the most 
interesting pieces of work which is being done by 
these Associations is the organization of half-hour 
classes for cash girls. These young girls are released 
by their employers from neighboring department stores 
for a short time in the morning and are sent over to 
the Association building, where they receive practical 
instruction which may fit them for better work in the 
store. The inexpensive lunch-room or rest-room, the 
classes in subjects relating to home-making and dress- 
making, and the various clubs for a good time, all 
reach very close to the needs of employed girls who 
are willing to avail themselves of them. The Asso- 

373 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

ciation, however, is realizing that its best work cannot 
be done in its own building. Many of the Associa- 
tions are conducting industrial classes and social clubs 
in factories. It has been the author's privilege to 
visit an overall factory in which a Y. W. C. A. secre- 
tary is employed by the firm and is given free scope in 
applying any social, or even religious method, she 
may see fit. These girls take china lessons, violin 
instruction and classes in dressmaking and millinery. 
They give factory dances, and they hold half-hour 
noon prayer meetings, all under the wise direction of 
this woman of trained leadership and high ideals. 
Some Associations are even conducting such classes 
and meetings in the homes of factory workers. 

The most appealing problem of the city girl is 
probably that of her amusements. The Associations are 
beginning to study the cheap dance halls, the skating 
rinks and the low-grade hotels, and are trying to find 
out how, by a process of substitution, they can save 
girls from the moral perils of city life. They meet 
here the difficulty which the social settlement meets, 
that the best-intentioned efforts, if they be conducted 
on the outside, do not seem to be appreciated by those 
for whom they are originated. The Associations 
must find some way by which the working-girls them- 
selves shall realize the advantage of social life under 
more wholesome surroundings and exposed to less 
moral hazards than those which exist at present, and 
shall co-operate in that united effort, which is more 
slow in developing among women than among men, 
for their own elevation. 

374 



The Christian Associations 



REFERENCES 

"The Work of the Young Men's Christian Association 
among High School Boys," and "The Purpose and Pro- 
gram of a Young Men's Christian Association in a Prepara- 
tory School, " both by David R. Porter. "Work among 
Wage Earning Boys," by C. C. Robinson. These and 
other pamphlets are published by the Association Press, New 
York, who also publish a monthly magazine of their move- 
ment, called "Association Boys." 

The work of the Young Women's Christian^Association 
may be studied in the annual reports and other pamphlets, 
published by the International Association, New York. 



XXXII 

THE LARGER NURTURE 

A WORD remains to be spoken about the larger 
nurture. We have tried to show how boys and 
girls are to be made better for their own sakes, 
for the comfort of their parents and for the health 
and safety of society. But how are they to be trained 
and inspired to hand down the torch, to endeavor to 
perpetuate civilization, to make the world better for 
their children and their children better for the world? 
This question is the latest thing in education and in 
religion. The social emphasis is beginning to be felt 
in the school and the church. 

The answer is coming in some unexpected ways. 
The poets, the novelists and the dramatists are begin- 
ning to be gospelers. Socialism is uttering its pas- 
sionate cry for social justice and it is being heard in 
quarters where the church is not listened to and by 
those who do not speak our mother tongue. The 
universities, full of youth in the days of decision, are 
sensitive to the note of the time, and multitudes are 
going forth from their doors, not all professedly relig- 
ious, with the determination to enlist for the service 
of man. Says Miss Jane Addams who knows: "Did 
the religious educator at the present moment but enter 

376 



The Larger Nurture 



the industrial inferno he would find many ardent 
young people who would gladly unite with him in 

asserting the reality of spiritual forces He 

would find traces of a new religious expression, with 
marked scientific and humanitarian aspects." Here, 
Miss Addams thinks, is the possibility of a new fel- 
lowship in religion as well as in service. 

There are methods of education being used con- 
sciously to-day to lead the young, as they mature, not 
to exploit nor to enjoy but to serve this present 
world. The schools have ever exalted, in their teach- 
ing of biography and history, the nobler types of man- 
hood. They have glorified the poets and refused to 
immortalize the money makers, and of late they have 
suppressed their earlier emphasis upon the soldiers 
and are bringing to the front the servants of the com- 
mon good. The schools are being made centers of 
information upon some philanthropies, like the anti- 
tuberculosis war, and are sometimes used as collecting 
agencies for community benevolences. Mention has 
already been made of one high school where election 
to the "Service Committee" is the highest school 
honor. The private schools, which train mainly the 
children of the rich, have not entirely forgotten their 
social obligations to their pupils. These schools in 
England are regarded as distinctly for "the directing 
classes," and this consciousness of future leadership, 
coupled with fine old school traditions, has developed 
at Rugby and Harrow and Abbotsholme a fine noblesse 
oblige which has made the Englishman everywhere an 
able, conscientious and somewhat conceited helper of 

377 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

humanity. In connection with our own Groton School 
there has been for many years a camp for less fortunate 
boys, not only paid for but actually conducted by the 
older boys of the school. 

As civic consciousness develops, there are endeav- 
ors to enroll children in active movements for the gen- 
eral good. Colonel George E. Waring began it with his 
Junior Street Cleaning Brigade. In other cities chil- 
dren plant trees and seeds or receive recognitions for 
helping clean the alleys. One city even had its aux- 
iliary junior police force. John Gunckel counts in the 
tens of thousands of dollars the value of found prop- 
erty that has been restored by his Toledo Newsboys' 
Association. The temperance organizations and the 
societies for humanity to animals have for years en- 
rolled thousands of children indoctrinated with the 
principles of temperance and mercy. The Children 
of the Revolution are trained to perpetuate the heroic 
memory of the defenders of liberty. The City His- 
tory Clubs have a similar ideal, based on local history. 
The School Cities are training schools in citizenship 
and self-government. That great organization, the 
Boy Scouts of America, has as its motto, "Be Pre- 
pared," its drill is in life craft as well as in scout craft, 
and one of the pledges by which it binds its members 
is "to do a good turn to somebody every day. " In 
the boys' fraternity, the Order of the Knights of King 
Arthur, upon the conferral of knighthood the lad 
assumes a quest of service for others to be immediately 
performed, and he is told that this is to be the symbol 
of his life habit 

378 



The Larger Nurture 



The home helps the larger nurture in two ways, 
by conversation and literature about social movements 
and by parental example of giving and sharing. Here 
is the most real and effective, though unobtrusive, 
school of to-mcrrow. The child that has early drunk 
the milk of reform, of patriotism, of missions cannot 
easily disown the mental habits and enthusiasms of 
his early years. There was a scriptural custom, often 
imitated in New England homes, of "giving the first- 
born to God." It would be amazing to know how 
many men and women to-day, not in the professional 
ministry only, are doing their life work because of this 
maternal consecration. 

The church has the best machinery in the world 
for the larger nurture. The theme is central in the 
Christian and Jewish faith and is the continual subject 
of Sunday-school teaching. The churches are full of 
graded service clubs of many names. Most of all, in 
missions, the pedagogy of which has been worked out 
by pictures and devices, missionary exhibits and 
pageants, normal classes and study clubs, the church 
sets before the young the world problem, offers the 
highest idealism for enlistment and suggests a life 
motive which may be worked out at home and in 
one's vocation as well as abroad. The Student Vol- 
unteer Movement has reached down into the academies 
and high schools for recruits and the Missionary 
Education Movement has gone in its trail, to sow the 
seed of knowledge for future harvests. The theologi- 
cal seminaries periodically organize bands of youth 
who go together to particularly difficult places, while 

379 



Betterment through Nurture and Service 

lately, under the inspiration of Dr. Edward A. Steiner, 
college graduates have become a group to go abroad 
to study the conditions of immigrants in their old 
homes and then gone into the coal-mine regions to 
help them meet the conditions of their new homes. 
Annually the Christian Associations make the rounds 
of the colleges to win leaders for their great work, and 
the social settlements find their workers from the 
same source. It may not be without significance 
as to the rapport between the national "service" and 
religious service that in the Schools of Commerce 
and Diplomacy at both Yale and Columbia young 
prospective missionaries and diplomats study side by 
side. 

More remains to be done. The college student 
is accessible to generous appeals, but what of those 
who go into business instead? Do we not sometimes 
imply that the collegian is to become the servant of, 
while the business man is served by, humanity? What 
are we going to do to help the boy or girl who leaves 
school, either through poverty or because of eagerness 
to get into affairs, to see his obligation to humanity? 

REFERENCES 

"The Social Gospel/' by Shailer Mathews. Philadel- 
phia: Griffith and Rowland, 1910. Lessons on the family 
and social regeneration. 

"The Gospel of the Kingdom/' by Josiah Strong. New 
York: The Institute of Social Service, 1908. Courses of 
study, in monthly parts, on living social problems. 

"Social Duties from the Christian Point of View/' by 
380 



The Larger Nurture 



Charles R. Henderson. Chicago: The University of Chi- 
cago, 1909. A text-book of social work. 

' 'Missionary Methods for Sunday School Workers, " by 
George H. Trull. New York: Presbyterian Board of For- 
eign Missions, 1901. 



26 



A PROGRAM FOR THE BETTERMENT 
OF BOYS AND GIRLS 

WE in America are fond of programs. They 
help make our aims definite. They make 
good rallying cries for advance. After awhile 
they assist us to measure the things which we have 
done against the things that we ought to have done. 

Some of the things which our survey suggests as 
immediate goals in America are as follows: 

In the Home. — The home must be seen as a 
national social problem. We must have definite train- 
ing for parenthood and homemaking for both boys 
and girls, and find ways to give it to all those who 
leave school early and go to work. Perhaps we must 
originate the profession of parental counselor and 
connect it with both school and home. Houses must 
be planned for homes and for children. Simple living 
must be made an art and ideals must be set up which 
shall tend to make earlier marriage possible and whole- 
some child-bearing and child-nurture more feasible. 
Especially the problem of protecting present and future 
mothers must be handled directly. Safeguards must 
be thrown around virtue and the springs of life must 
be kept pure by medical and legal control of social 
diseases. Pregnant women must be protected from 
hard work and mothers of the laboring classes given 

382 






For the Betterment of Boys and Girls 

sufficient leisure to insure the life and health of their 
little ones. We must foster every method of counter- 
acting the overcrowding and homelessness of our grow- 
ing cities. Rapid transit, garden cities, slum parks 
and playgrounds, tenement play-roofs, school exten- 
sion are some of the methods implied. The idealistic 
forces, the church, the school and the press must add 
to instruction and reform inspiration, to rescue the 
highest ideals of the home from decay. 

In the School. — The schools must move out of 
doors. They must entirely base their work upon 
the interests of children; they must through the 
hand exercise the will; they must, early in the grades, 
begin to afford the children glimpses of possible future 
vocations and then by a variety of schools prepare 
those who must leave at different ages best to enter 
life successfully in all the vocations, industrial and 
professional; they must make moral training more 
central and they must deepen the social emphasis. 
Not only must we have schools, but the children of 
the land must get schooling. Scholarships, truancy 
work and compulsory attendance must come more 
generally. Schools must enlarge their function still 
further to aid and supplement the home and must 
assume some of the duties of state fatherhood. In 
this respect the children's court must be even more 
closely related to the schools than to jurisprudence. 

In the Church. — The church must even more 
definitely plan to furnish the motive power for this 
program. It is easy to tell what to do, but who 
is going to be willing to do it? The church must 

383 



For the Betterment of Boys and Girls 

furnish more of what Augustine called "men who are 
themselves the kingdom of heaven." Then the 
church must be to its children the matrix both of 
saner ideals and of safe habits. It must multiply its 
informal supplementary agencies which fill the empty 
places in the community life. To do this, especially 
in the rural regions, it must be united and economical 
in its organization and work. 

In Society. — Parenthood, health, civic beauty 
must be regarded as public concerns. The commu- 
nity life must be planned on purpose for children and 
judged by its adaptability to their good. Until it 
helps and not hinders their moral safety we have many 
things to do. Society must go back and gather up all 
its fragments, the lame, the blind, the defective, and 
yet it must not allow the weak and unworthy to per- 
petuate their kind. The ideal toward which society 
should work is a kingdom of friends and fellow- 
servants. 

The attitude of this book is that of the meliorist, 
to use George Eliot's word, or, following the triple 
distinction of humanity which some one has made: of 
optimists, pessimists and "possumists," that of the 
"possumist," one who believes we can. It is that of 
the physician who, when asked how he could always 
be so cheerful when he was constantly in the presence 
of suffering, replied: "I always see disease from the 
curative standpoint." The author may not have made 
his shadows very dark because he is in the habit of 
seeing boys and girls from the curative standpoint. 
Many evils and temptations beset them. This world is 

384 



For the Betterment of Boys and Girls 

not so good a place for them as we hope to make it. 
But we have them on our side, and we believe that, 
working with them, we shall make them such men and 
women as will work with their children for a better 
to-morrow. 



BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

The author has attempted at the end of each chapter to 
give the names of the latest and best available books upon 
each of the subjects considered, but many of his readers 
will wish to go further in their study. Instead of cumber- 
ing his pages with a long general and special bibliography, 
it seems to be more helpful to refer to such bibliographies 
which have been compiled by wiser specialists than himself 
and which are readily accessible. 

GENERAL 

"A Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Sub- 
jects, " by Teachers in Harvard University. Cambridge: 
Harvard University, 1910. Covers such subjects treated in 
this book as: The Family, Moral Education, Health, Social 
Settlements, City Planning and Beautification, Defectives, 
Public Recreations, Industrial Education, Religious Educa- 
tion, Education in Social Questions. 

There is a bibliography of Child Mortality, Play, Rec- 
reation and Clubs, Medical Inspection, Backward Children, 
Industrial Education, Child Labor, Dependent, Delinquent 
and Neglected Children in " Child Problems, " by George 
B. Mangold. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1910. 

BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 

"Books for Boys and Girls Approved by the Brooklyn 
Public Library, " Brooklyn: The Public Library, 1911. 

386 



Bibliographies 



BOY LIFE 

There is a Bibliography of Books about Boys in Work 
with Boys for October, 1909. Boston: The Federated 
Boys' Clubs. 

"A Classified Bibliography of Boy Life and Organized 
Work with Boys," by J. T. Bowne, in "Association Boys." 
New York: The Association Press, 1906. 

There is an annotated bibliography of boy life in "The 
Boy and the Church," by Eugene C. Foster. Philadelphia: 
The Sunday School Times Co., 1909. 

CHILD STUDY 

"A Bibliography of Child Study," by Louis N. Wil- 
son. Worcester: Clark University. With annual supple- 
ments. 

The best guidance to special topics in child study is to 
follow up the footnote references in "Adolescence, " by G. 
Stanley Hall. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1904 

DELINQUENTS, DEFECTIVES AND DEPENDENTS 

There is a good bibliography in "American Charities," 
by Amos G. Warner. New York: T. Y. Crowell and Co., 
1908. 

Also in "Child Problems," by George B. Mangold. 
New York: The Macmillan Co., 1910. 

EDUCATION 

An annual bibliography is published in The Educational 
Review, New York. 

387 



Bibliographies 



HEALTH AND HYGIENE 

There is a bibliogaphy of health, hygiene, athletics and 
sports, physical education and theory in Hygiene and Physical 
Education for April, 1910. Springfield: F. A. Bassette and 
Co. 

THE HOME 

There is a bibliography of the family and the home in 
"The History of Matrimonial Institutions, " by George 
Elliott Howard. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 
1904. 

INSTINCTS AND INTERESTS 

"A Bibliography of Children's Interests' ' is to be found 
in "The Psychology of Child Development," by Irving 
King. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1903. 

JUVENILE COURTS AND PROBATION 

A bibliography of these subjects is printed annually in 
the Reports of the State Probation Commission, Albany, 
N. Y. 

MORAL EDUCATION 

There is an annotated bibliography of Moral Education 
in " Moral Education," by Edward Howard Griggs. New 
York: B. W. Huebsch, 1903. Very full up to its date. 

There is a select bibliography in " Moral Instruction 
and Training in Schools," edited by Michael E. Sadler. 
London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908. Best on for- 
eign titles. 

PLAY 

There is a good bibliography of play in " Education by 
Plays and Games," by George Ellsworth Johnson. Boston: 
Ginnand Co., 1907. 

388 



Bibliographies 



RELIGIOUS PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 

There is an annotated bibliography in "The Pedagogi- 
cal Bible School, " by S. B. Haslett. New York: Fleming 
H. Revell Co., 1903. 

RURAL PROBLEMS 

"A Selected Bibliography on the Country Church 
Problem. " Newton Centre, Mass.: Newton Theological 
Institution, 1909. 

There are extensive bibliographies of country life in 
"The Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, " L. H. Bailey, 
editor. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1909. 

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 

The Psychological Bulletin gives an annual review of the 
year's books on the subject 

SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 

"The Bibliography of College, Social, University and 
Church Settlements," by Caroline W. Montgomery. Chi- 
cago* College Settlements Association, 1905. 

STORIES 

There are excellent bibliographies in "Stories and Story 
Telling, " by Edward Porter St. John. Boston: The Pilgrim 
Press, 1910. Another is in The Playground, New York, for 
August, 1910. 

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

"Selected Bibliography* on Industrial Education/' by 
Charles R. Richards. New York: National Society for 
the Promotion of Industrial Education, 1907. 

389 



Bibliographies 



VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 

"Choosing a Career," two booklets, one for boys, one 
for girls, on the requirements of different vocations. Brook- 
lyn: E. W. Weaver, 25 Jefferson Avenue, 1910. 

"The Vocational Guidance of Youth, " by Meyer 
Bloomfield, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911, contains 
a list of books on vocational guidance for adult readers. 



INDEX 



Abbotsholme, 58, 377. 

Abbott, Ernest H., on punish- 
ments, 69. 

Abnormalities, mental, 189. 
moral, 293. 
physical, 101, 292. 

Activity of children, 18, 

Addams, Jane, on the social 
spirit, 376. 

Adenoids, 103. 

Adjustment in education, 113. 

Adler, Felix, on vocational 
guidance, 149. 

Adolescence, 13, 53, 132, 337. 

Adoption of children, 323. 

Age of children, 105, 275. 

Agricultural colleges, 237. 

Agriculture, 60, 237, 263. 

Allen, William H., on infant 
mortality, 99. 

Allowance for youths, an, 58. 

Amusements, 374. 

Andover Play School, 232. 

Anthropomorphisms, 25. 

Anti -domestic years, 54. 

Apartment houses, 62. 

Apperception, 116, 122. 

Apprentice system* 139. 

Art, 243. 

Art museums, 255. 

Asexualization, 95, 193. 

Atavisms, 6. 

Athearn, Walter S., on the 
home, 68. 



Athens, play in, 206. 
Athletic leagues, church, 368. 

school, 152, 185. 
Athletics, 151. 
Atkins, G. Glenn, on history, 

127. 
Attendance, school, 54, 125, 

146, 281, 312. 
Attention, 24, 27. 
Atypical children, 197. 
Avidness, 16. 

Babies, 1, 98, 108. 
dependent, 320. 

Backward children, 198. 

Backwardness, causes of, 105, 
199. 

Baker, Ray Stannard, on educa- 
tion, 327. 

Balliet, T. M., on fighting, 12. 
on the instincts, 12. 

Barr, Martin W., on defectives, 
191, 193, 195, 196. 

Barrows, Isabel C, cited, 227. 

Basket-ball, 186 

Baths, 209. 

Bible, in education, 50, 166, 
168, 331. 
school, vacation, 239. 
stories from, 31, 332. 

Big Brother movement, 83, 300. 

Bigelow, Edward F., cited, 238. 

Biography in moral training, 
170. 



391 



Index 



Biology in sex instruction, 87. 

Birth-rate, 86. 

Black, Winifred, cited, 83. 

Blaustein, David, cited, 220. 

Block system, 304, 309. 

Bloomfield, Meyer, on voca- 
tional guidance, 147. 

Boarding out, 301. 

Bobbitt, John F., on childless- 
ness, 86. 

Books, 29. 

"Boston— 1915/ ' 263. 

Boston Farm School, 315. 

Boy choirs, 349. 

Boy Scouts, 233, 238, 336, 348, 
370, 378. 

Boys, General Alliance of Work- 
ers with, 212. 

Boys' brigade, 349. 
clubs, 80, 81, 212. 
Federated, 212. 
superintendents of, 217. 
Mass meetings, 216. 

Bradley, Charles H., cited, 315. 

Brittain, James M., on delin- 
quents, 278. 

Brooklyn movement, the, 137, 
147. 

Brotherhood of David, 349. 

Brotherhood of St. Andrew, 
355. 

Brown, Elmer E., on moral 
ideas, 162. 

Bunker Hill Boys' Club, 214. 

Burk, Frederic, on education, 
115. 

Bushnell, Horace, on reforma- 
tion, 303. 

Butler, Nicholas M., on educa- 
tion, 112. 



Butterfield, Kenyon L., cited, 
238. 

Cabot, Richard C, on children's 

rights, 134. 
Camps, 82, 218, 228. 
church, 224, 351. 
family, 65, 224. 
municipal, 66 t 225. 
school, 378. 
work, 231. 

Y. M. C. A., 227, 371. 
Captains of Ten, 347. 
Carnegie libraries, 243. 
Case system of moral training, 

171. 
Chaperons for summer out- 
ings, 284. 
Chart of Child Development, 45. 
of German Industrial Educa- 
tion, facing 142. 
Chautauquas, 244. 
Chicago Commission on Vice, 

95. 
Chicago, park system of, 208, 
210. 
schools of, 130, 140, 155, 176. 
Child, physical development of, 
13, 100. 
saving of, 321. 
Child labor, 93, 275, 290. 
mortality, 98. 
study, 120, 308. 
Childlessness, 63, 86. 
Children, defects among, 101, 
189, 292. 
occupations among, 93, 275 9 

290. 
of the Revolution, 378. 
rooms of, 272. 



392 



Index 



Children's aid societies, 321. 

bureaus, 322. 
Chivalry in childhood, 9, 92. 
Choirs, boy, 349. 

girl, 346. 
Christian Endeavor, 336, 344, 

354, 356. 
Church, and the larger nurture, 
379. 

city, 341. 

country, 264. 
Church architecture, 245. 

camps, 224, 351. 

clubs, 341. 

dormitories, 353. 

dramatics, 255. 

festivals, 246, 255, 342. 

membership, 338. 

night schools, 353. 

worship, 246. 
Cicero and culture, 117. 
Cincinnati, University of, 146. 
City, the small, 242. 
City conditions, 250, 287. 

history clubs, 378. 

planning, 262. 

problems, 61, 63. 
Classics and children, 129. 
Classification of defectives, 191. 

of delinquents, 307. 
Cliques, 153. 
Clubs, boys', 76, 83, 212, 347. 

girls', 344. 

women's, 248, 262. 
Coe, George A., cited, 48. 
Coeducation, 159. 
College deputation work, 239. 

fetich, 116. 

ideals, 117, 138. 

preparatory school and, 116. 



Collier, John, on motion pic- 
tures, 251. 
Colonial education, 138. 
Colonization societies, 316. 
Columbia City, Ind., 249. 
Columbia Park Boys' Club, 218, 

229. 
Compulsory insurance, 280. 
Compulsory school attendance, 

282. 
Conscience, 163, 164. 
Contagious diseases, 102, 104. 
Continuation schools, 143, 145. 
Contributory delinquence, 290. 
Conversion, 48, 59, 339. 
Cooperative stories, 35. 
Corn planters' clubs, 237. 
Correlation, 26, 116, 130. 
Correspondence study, 273. 
Cottage reformatories, 311. 
Country churches, 264. 

festivals, 244, 267. 

ministers, 264. 

newspapers, 245. 

schools, 268. 

week, 233. 
County fairs, 241. 

seats, 241. 
Courts, juvenile, 286. 
Criminal type, the, 292. 
Crippled children, 201. 
Cronin, John J. , on physical ab- 
normalities, 105. 

on milk, 109. 
Cruelty, societies for preven- 
tion of, 322. 
Culture epochs, 120. 
Curfew ordinances, 249. 
Curriculum, the, 120, 126, 
281. 



393 



Index 



Curtis, H. S., on the play move- 
ment, 205. 

Dairies, 108. 

Dancing, 184, 186, 236, 247, 257, 

266. 
Davenport, E., quoted, 86. 
Dawson, George E., on parent- 
hood, 96. 
Defectives, 189. 
De Garmo, Charles, on the city 

home, 61. 
Delinquents, 290. 
Department store detectives, 

300. 
Dependents, 319. 
Deputation work, 239. 
Detention homes, 301, 312. 
Detroit, 27, 64, 322. 
Devine, Edward T., on imbe- 
ciles, 190. 
on education, 200. 
Diphtheria, 102. 
Discipline, 57. 
Diseases of children, 101, 

104. 
Divorce, 63, 290. 
Dodge, James M., on money 

value of education, 142. 
Domestic science, 87. 

service, 61, 63. 
Dormitories, church, 353 
Y. M. C. A., 371. 
Y. W. C. A., 373. 
Dramatic clubs, 215. 

instinct, 20. 
Dramatics, 81, 184, 255. 
Drill, 26. 

Dutchess County apple pickers, 
284. 



Ecole des Meres, 87. 
Edison, Thomas A., cited, 26. 
Education, mental, 26, 54, 112, 
136, 151, 162, 175, 198, 
214, 353, 373. 
moral, 113, 160, 161. 
physical, 11, 90, 100, 185, 350. 
social, 42, 134, 187, 377. 
vocational, 137. 
Eliot, Charles W., on the life- 
career motive, 149. 
Eliot, George, on humor, 63. 

on meliorism, 384. 
Emerson, Ralph W., on provo- 
cation, 328. 
Employed boys, 364. 

girls, 373. 
Employment agencies, 93. 
England, charity methods in, 
136. 
education in, 58, 117, 377 
English, 37, 127. 
Environment, 288. 
Ethical training, 163. 
Eugenics, 67, 85, 99, 196. 
Evans, Milton G., on vacation 

Bible schools, 239. 
Evening schools, 176. 
Examination, medical, in juve- 
nile courts, 293, 309. 
in schools, 101, 199. 
Extremists, children as, 21. 
Eye strain, 104. 

Factory social work, 374. 
Fall River Boys' Club, 216. 
Families, large, 290. 
Family, the, 60, 289. 
Family camps, 65, 224. 
Fancy, 17. 



394 



Index 



Farm life, 60, 237, 263. 

Fatherhood, 2, 4, 50. 

Faunce, W. H. P., on child 

study, 120. 
Federated Boys' Clubs, 212. 
Feeble-minded, 189. 
Fernald, Walter, on defectives, 

189. 
Festivals, church, 246, 255. 

city, 253. 

country, 244. 

school, 185. 
Field houses, 208. 
Fighting instinct, 7. 
Fisher, Irving, on mother- 
hood, 87. 
Fiske, George W., cited, 44, 48. 
Flexner, Abraham, on the reci- 
tation, 131. 
Flower missions, 345. 
Folk dancing, 186, 236. 
Food, 108. 

Foreign parents, 289. 
Foreigners in schools, 176. 
Formal discipline, 115, 116. 
Foster homes, 310, 323. 
Fouillee, A., on conscience 

training, 164. 
France, moral training in, 164. 
Fraternal lodges, 247. 
Fraternities in churches, 352, 
355. 

in schools, 153. 
Free lecture systems, 181, 256. 
Fresh air work, 233. 
Friendships, 41. 

Galton, Francis, on eugenics, 

96. 
Game rooms, 342. 



Gang, the, 39, 76, 83, 271, 288. 
Gardening, 231, 285. 
Geography, 128. 
Geometry, 123. 

George, William R., and his 
Junior Republic, 310, 314. 
Germany, compulsory insur- 
ance in, 280. 

education in, 119, 142, 177. 

industrial education in, 143. 

moral education in, 165. 

play opportunities in, 206, 
241. 

school walking tours in, 230. 
Girls, choirs of, 346. 

dependent, 324. 

education of, 78, 133. 

group -spirit of, 41. 

in industry, 275. 

overstrain of, 133. 

reformation of, 94, 325. 

sex information and, 91. 
Gladden, Washington, on youth, 

77. 
Go-cart clubs, 345. 
Godparents, 73. 

Good Will Boys' Club, 214, 218. 
Good Will Farm, 324. 
Graded Sunday schools, 333. 
Grange, the, 265. 
Gregariousness of children, 39. 
Groszmann, Maximilian P. E., 
on atypical children, 197. 
Groton School, 378. 
Growth, 13. 

Gulick, Luther H., on cities, 
65. 

on hygiene, 107. 

on play, 203, 206. 

on parks, 207. 



395 



Index 



Gunckel, John, mentioned, 216, 

378. 
Gymnasiums, 350. 

Habit, 46. 

Half-time schools, 364. 
Hall, G. Stanley, on child of- 
fenders, 294. 

on folk dancing, 236. 

on linguistics, 127. 

on the recitation, 131. 

on rural occupations, 60. 

on semi -criminal period, 
53. 

on sex hygiene, 92. 

on will, 124. 

on zest, 17. 
Hard, William, on high-school 

fraternities, 155. 
Hart, Hastings H., on depend- 
ents, 319, 321. 

on juvenile courts, 297. 

on physical abnormalities, 
292. 
Harvey, Lorenzo D., on home- 
makers' clubs, 88. 

on infant mortality, 98. 
Health boards, 101. 

education, 100, 107. 
Healthy -mindedness, 3. 
Henderson, C. Hanford, on edu- 
cation, 113, 116. 
Heredity, 85. 
Hesperia movement, 267. 
Heuristic method, 131. 
High school, 151, 365. 

curriculum, 118. 

organization, 151. 

secret societies, 153. 
Hiking, 229. 



Hinckley, George W., men- 
tioned, 324. 

Historical pilgrimages, 230. 

•History, 120, 127. 

Hodder, Jessie D., on unmar- 
ried mothers, 321. 

Hofer, Marie, mentioned, 236. 

Home, the, 60, 108, 173, 272, 
289, 304, 379, 382. 

Home libraries, 256. 
study, 131. 

Homemakers' clubs, 237. 

Honor societies in schools, 158. 

Home, H. H., on religion, 
162. 

Hospital social service, 321. 

Hospitality, 62, 67. 

Housekeeping centers, 87. 

Houses of refuge, 306. 

Howe, Samuel G., mentioned, 
200. 

Hugo, Victor, on instinct, 12. 

Humor an essential, 4. 

Hutchinson, Woods, on educa- 
tion, 114, 124, 139. 
on hygiene, 107. 
on interest, 121. 

Hyannis Normal School, 132. 

Hygiene, 100. 

Hymnology, 246. 

Idealism in children, 22. 

in education, 134. 
Idio-imbeciles, 192. 
Idiots, 192. 

Illegitimates, 266, 321. 
Imaginativeness, 17, 36. 
Imbeciles, 190. 

moral, 192. 
Incarnation as a habit, 3. 



396 



Index 



Incorrigibles, 320. 

Independence Day, 254. 

Indiana, 248. 

Individuality, 132, 288. 

Industrial education, 142. 

Industries and education, 139, 
277. 

Infant mortality, 98. 

Inspection, medical, 101, 199, 
293, 309. 
sanitary, 108. 

Instincts, 44, 77. 

Institutionalism, 308, 317. 

Institutions, 307, 319. 

Interests, the, 121. 

Interlaken School, 58, 284. 

Interscholastic sports, 236. 

Israels, Mrs. C. H., on danc- 
ing, 257. 

James, William, on social con- 
scription, 134. 

Jenks, Jeremiah W., men- 
tioned, 368. 

Jesus and children, 32. 

Jesus on defectives, 201. 
on expulsiveness of goodness, 
22. 

Jewish children, 48, 213, 215, 
379. 

Johnson, Alexander, on defec- 
tives, 192, 196. 

Johnson, George E., on play, 
123, 206. 

Johnson, Herrold E., on French 
moral training, 165. 

Johnstone, E. R., on teaching 
defectives, 198. 

Jones, Rufus M., on moral in- 
fluence, 173. 



Judges, Juvenile Court, 295. 
Junior republics, 310, 314. 

societies, 343. 

street cleaning brigades, 378. 
Juvenile courts, 286. 

protective leagues, 302. 

Keller, Helen, mentioned, 201. 

Kelley, Florence, on child la- 
bor, 275. 

Kellogg, Paul U., on Boston, 
263. 

Kent, Henry W., cited, 256. 

Kingsbury, Susan H., on leav- 
ing school, 140. 
on vocations, 139. 

King's Daughters, 336, 343, 345, 
354. 

Knights of King Arthur, 93, 
336, 345, 352, 355, 378. 

Kokomo, 249. 

Lancaster, E. G., on conver- 
sion, 48. 

Lang, Andrew, 30. 

Language work, 127. 

Laws regarding delinquents, 
294. 

Lectures, free, 181, 256. 

Lee, Gerald Stanley, on mis- 
chief, 12. 

Lee, Joseph, on play, 40, 204, 
209. 
on youth, 77. 

Legislation against school se- 
cret societies, 157. 

Leisure in education, 274, 283. 

Libraries, 256. 

Limitation, period of, 24. 

Limitlessness, period of, 26. 



27 



397 



Index 



Lincoln, Abraham, mentioned, 
117. 

Lincoln House, 219. 

Lindsey, Ben B., cited, 310. 
on delinquency laws, 295. 

Little, C. J., on teachers, 329. 

Locke, John, on formal disci- 
pline, 115. 
on the gentleman, 117. 

Lodge, the, 247. 

Lowell, James R., on reading, 
127. 

Lyceums, 245. 

Mack, Julian W., on prostitu- 
tion, 94. 

McMurry, Charles, on interest, 
121. 
on thinking, 114. 

Mangold, George B., on anti- 
toxin, 102. 
on child labor, 276. 
on delinquents, 293. 
on placing out, 313. 
on prevention, 308. 

Mann, Horace, cited, 303. 

Manual training, 122, 128, 145. 

Marathons, 158. 

Marietta, O., 251. 

Marriage, 62. 

Martin, George H., on colonial 
education, 138. 

Mass meetings of boys, 217. 

Massachusetts Commission on 
Industrial Education, 141, 
277. 

Massachusetts General Hospi- 
tal, 321. 

Mathematics, 115, 128, 129. 

Mathews, Shailer, cited, 62. 



Mayo, Earl, on infant mortal- 
ity, 98. 
Mayo, "Mother," cited, 266. 
Medical inspection of children, 
101, 199, 293, 309. 

superstitions, 107. 
Memorial playgrounds, 208. 
Memory of children, 25, 114, 

121. 
Meynell, Alice, on childhood, 

18. 
Milk, 108. 
Ministers, 68, 264. 
Mischief, 12. 
Missionary bands, 344. 

education movement, 379. 

giving, 399. 

service, 355, 368, 379. 
Modern languages, 127. 
Money value of training, 142. 
Montaigne, Michel de, on gains 

in education, 114. 
Moral education, 126, 162. 

perverts, 193, 293. 

suasion, 69. 

training in America, 168. 
in France, 164. 
in Germany, 165. 
Moral Education Board, 182. 
Moral Prophylaxis, Society for, 

93. 
Mortality of infants, 98. 
Motherhood, 50. 

education for, 88, 99. 

endowment of, 94. 
Mothers, unmarried, 321. 
Motion pictures, 243, 251. 
Municipal camps, 225. 
Museums, 255. 
Music, 253. 



398 



Index 



Nature study, 127. 

Nearing, Scott, on child labor, 

279, 281. 
New England, education in, 

116, 138. 
New York dancing academies, 
257. 
milk supply, 109. 
playgrounds, 207, 210. 
school athletics, 185. 
school physical examinations, 

103. 
school vocational guidance, 
148. 
New Zealand minimum wage 

law, 280. 
Newsboys, 216, 378. 
Newspapers, country, 245. 
Night schools, 176, 353. 
Nurse, school, 108. 
visiting, 110, 304. 

Older boys, 216, 354. 
Only child, the, 1, 41. 
Orphans, 290, 320, 324. 
Outdoor life, 218, 234. 

schools, 14, 132. 
Overstrain of girls, 133. 
Ownership of homes, 61. 

Pageants, 254. 

Palmer, George H., on moral 

training, 169. 
Parental counselors, 63. 

schools, 312. 
Parenthood, ideals for, 71, 85, 
96. 

training for, 4, 66, 67. 
Parks, 207. 
Parole officers, 298. 



Parsons, Frank, cited, 149. 

Pasteurization, 109. 

Peabody, Francis G., on the 

home, 71. 
Pear, William H., on depend- 
ents, 322. 
Peixotto, Sidney S., cited, 84. 
Penitence in children, 47. 
Penology, 306. 
Perry, Charles A., on the social 

school, 175, 185. 
Personality, 27, 78, 317. 
Perspective of a child, 25. 
Physical age, 105, 275. 

defects in school children, 

103. 
examination, in courts, 293, 

309. 
in schools, 101, 199. 
Physician, family, 67. 
Pilgrim Fraternity, 355. 
Placing out, 71, 310, 323. 
Plato, on play, 79. 

on public nurture, 62. 
Play, 17, 40, 117, 123, 135, 203, 

276, 287. 
supervision of, 204, 210. 
Play masters, 210. 
Play school, 232. 
Playgrounds, 179, 205, 303. 
Playrooms, 342. 
Police and children, 291. 
Porter, David R., on the high 

school, 118, 119, 366. 
Prematurity, 76. 
Preparatory schools, 56, 369. 
Prevention, 275. 
Probation officers, 297. 
Prodigal, the, 53. 
Prosperity problems, 54, 62, 159. 



399 



Index 



Prostitution, 94. 
Psychological age, 105, 275. 
Psychology of childhood, 24. 

of learning, 24. 

of religion, 44, 49, 120. 
Punishments, 69. 

Queens of Avilion, 345. 
Questions, education by, 335. 

Racial prototypes, 45. 
Reading, 27, 37, 122, 127. 
Reality, 4, 79. 
Reasoning of children, 25. 
Recapitulation theory, 120. 
Recitation, the, 131. 
Recreation, public, 211. 

centers, 183, 374. 

piers, 208. 
Reeder, R. R., on home, 289. 

on institutions, 324. 
Reformatories, 287, 306. 
Religion in children, 44, 79. 
Religious conversion, 59. 

education, 50, 173, 326, 370. 
Reports on venereal diseases, 

95, 293. 
Responsibility, 135. 
Retardation in schools, 125. 
Revivals, 50. 
Richman, Julia, cited, 149. 

on truancy, 125. 
Richmond, Ind., 249. 
Robinson, E. M., on camps, 227. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, on eugen- 
ics, 96. 
Rural conditions, 263. 

schools, 268. 

Sage, Russell, Foundation, 175. 
St. John, Edward P., cited, 44. 



Salem Fraternity, 212. 
Salvation Army, 316. 
Sane Fourth movement, 254. 
Savage survivals, 6, 78. 
Scholarships for poor children, 

137, 281. 
School, 26, 54, 112, 136, 151, 
162, 175, 198, 214, 353, 373. 

and child labor, 281. 

and delinquency, 291. 

city, 175. 
School clubs, 151. 

evening, 176, 353. 

leaving, 54, 140. 

lunches, 177. 

manual training, 145. 

medical examinations in, 101, 
199. 

meetings, 175, 186, 258, 268. 

nurses, 108. 

organizations, 151. 

outdoor, 14, 132. 

physicians, 101, 104. 

playgrounds, 179. 

publications, 153. 

social, the, 175. 

summer, 178, 226. 

trade, 145. 

vacation, 178, 303. 
School of Commerce and Diplo- 
macy, 380. 
Scouts, Boy, 233, 238, 336, 348, 

370, 378. 
Scudder, Myron T., on country 

festivals, 267. 
Search, Preston W., on individ- 
uality, 133. 
Seed-planting by children, 262. 
Self-assertive period, 40. 
Self-education, 271. 



400 



Index 



Self-propulsion, 121, 327. 
Semi -criminal period, 21, 316. 
Sentiment, age of, 48. 
Service, 74, 355, 368, 377, 379. 
Sex education, 84, 91, 172. 

hygiene, 13, 92. 
Sharp, Frank C, cited, 238. 
Sheldon, Henry D., on losses 

of the schools, 125. 
Shop work, 364. 
Shurtleff, Glen K., mentioned, 

372. 
"Side shows/' 151. 
Simplicity in life, 71, 234. 

in school, 159. 
Skating, 208. 
Slum playgrounds, 207. 
Snedden, David S., on interest, 

122. 
Snobbery in high school, 158. 
Social centers, 184, 238. 

conscription, 134. 

emphasis, 134. 

school, the, 175. 

service department of hospi- 
tals, 321. 

settlements, 219. 

workers, 42, 74. 
Social Prophylaxis, Society of, 

93. 
Socialism, 376. 
Sororities, 153. 

Spencer, Anna Garlin, on de- 
fectives, 189, 201. 
Spencer Herbert, on education, 

87. 
Sponsors, 73. 
Stages of child life, 45. 
Starbuck, Edwin D., on inter- 
est, 122. 



Steiner, Edward A., mentioned, 

380. 
Stereopticon in school, 182. 
Story, the, in education, 169. 
Story hour, 219, 342. 
Storytelling, 30, 342. 
Stout Institute, 88. 
Street boys, 40, 76, 83, 212, 288. 
Student volunteer movement, 

379. 
Sunday, 51. 
Sunday school, 50, 80, 326. 

athletic leagues, 368. 
Sunshine Society, 343, 345. 
Supervised play, 210. 
Swift, Edgar J., on education, 
114. 

on geniuses, 118. 

on semi-criminal period, 53. 

Taylor, Graham R., on home- 
seeking, 64. 

on play, 209. 
Teachers, 20, 112. 

and parents, 67. 

Sunday school, 330. 

of defectives, 198. 
Technological training, 139, 

145. 
Teeth, 103, 104, 107. 
Temperance teaching, 100. 
Theater, 251. 
Theatricals, 81, 184, 255. 
Thought period, 49. 
Thurston, Henry W., on delin- 
quent families, 302. 
Toledo Newsboys' Association, 

216, 378. 
Trachoma, 102. 
Trade Schools, 145 



401 



Index 



Training of teachers, 1. 

for defectives, 199. 

for Sunday schools, 329. 
Tramping parties, 229. 
Travelers' Aid Society, 93. 
Travis, Thomas, on child labor, 
278. 

on placing out, 310, 311. 
Truancy, 54, 125, 146, 281, 312. 
Truant officers, 299. 
Tuberculosis, 106. 
Tyler, J. M., on girls' physique, 
133. 

Unfoldment in education, 112. 
Unmarried mothers, 321. 

Vacation schools, 178, 303. 

Bible schools, 239. 
Venereal diseases, 95, 293. 
Vice, 42. 
Vice, Chicago Commission on, 

95. 
Vice, Society for the Suppres- 
sion of, 93. 
Visiting nurses, 108, 110, 304. 
Vitality tests, 105. 
Vocabulary of a child, 24. 
Vocational guidance, 147. 

high schools, 145. 

training, 137. 
Votaw, Clyde W., cited, 56. 

Wander years, the, 53. 

Ward, Edward J., on social cen- 
ters, 184, 238. 

Waring, George E., mentioned, 
378. 

Warner, Amos G., on care of 
babies, 320. 



Warner, Amos G. , on education 
of defectives, 198. 

Warner, Charles F., on voca- 
tional schools, 145. 

Weaver, Eli W., on industrial 
education, 136, 278. 
on summer work, 284. 
on vocational guidance, 147. 

White Cross Society, 93. 

White Plague, 95. 

White slavery, 93. 

Whitin, E. Stagg, on the social 
school, 187. 

Will, the, 48, 104, 123, 132, 172. 

Winter courses at colleges, 237. 

Wisconsin, University of, 238. 

Women, 62. 

Women's clubs, 248, 262. 

Woods, Robert A., on settle- 
ments, 219. 

Work camps, 231, 284. 

Working papers, 105, 275. 

Workshops, 364. 

Worship, 246. 

Writing in school, 128. 

Young, Ella Flagg, on voca- 
tional education, 144. 

Young Men's Christian Associ- 
ations, 11, 146, 149, 213, 
221, 226, 228, 239, 267, 
303, 358, 380. 

Young People 's Reading 
Courses, 268. 

Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation, 83, 226, 373, 
380. 

Zeublin, Charles, on educa- 
tional methods, 130. 



402 



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